The SGI Iris-4D/35 was selected for data acquisition, because it had good graphics features, which is useful for visualising the data. In addition, the SGI's have two serial ports, a convenient feature, since it was possible that a second input device could be used.
This was not felt to violate the ``price'' objective, since most of the software once it had been developed, could be easily ported to other computers, because the software developed was simple. In fact, if time remained, the possibility of porting the software to one of the new ``palmtop'' computers (such as the Hewlett-Packard HP200LX) was considered -- just to prove the point. Obviously, however, the HP200LX is not exactly the ideal development environment.