M.I.C.R.O.B.Y T.E.S Reprinted by permission from BYTE, July, 1985, McGraw-Hill Inc. publication. Price quoted are in US $. BYTE staff-written highlights of late developments in the microcomputer industry. New Multiuser UNIX Systems ..... CIRCA 1985 Historic Notes of Interest ..... Symmetric Computer Systems, San Jose, CA, is selling a 20-pound computer with a 32016 16-/32-bit processor, one parallel port, four serial ports for up to four terminals, a 50-megabyte hard disk, a I-megabyte floppy disk, and 2 megabytes of RAM. Included in the Model 375's price of $9950 are compilers or interpreters for C, Pascal, FORTRAN, BASIC, LISP, Prolog, Crystal, and APL. It also includes SPICE, Ingres, and a number Of UNIX/GENIX utilities, Although the machine is now available with National Semiconductor's GENIX implementation of Berkeley 4.1 or 4.2 UNIX, Symmetric plans to offer UNIX System V and Berkeley 4.3 versions later this year. Cadmus Computer Systems, Lowell, MA, announced CadMac, a 68010-based workstation with a 17-inch IO24- by IO24-pixel display, a 65-megabyte hard disk, tape backup, a mega- byte of RAM, and a Macintosh-compatible UNIX environment for $23,300. Digital Equipment Corp. introduced its expected MicroVAX II, which reportedly outper- forms DEC's low-end VAX products. Prices for the MicroVAX II, while much lower than com- parable VAX computers, still start at about $20,000. AT&T Offers 32-bit Processor to Other Companies AT&T announced that its WE32100 32-bit microprocessor, floating-point chips, memory-man- agement chips, and other peripheral chips are now available to other companies. AT&T will also sell board-level evaluation systems based on the chips. The WE32100 is an enhanced version of the WE32000 chip used in AT&T's 3B2/300 com- puter: the chip family was originally called Bellmac-32 when developed by AT&Ts Bell Labs subsidiary before divestiture. The 132-pin WE32100 chip features a 64-word on-chip cache, a 4-gigabyte address space, 15 interrupt levels, 16 32-bit registers, and a full 32-bit bus. All of the new chips are available in I0- and 14-MHz versions. AT&T's chip is not related to National Semiconductor's 32000-series processors. New 80286 Systems Flood COMDEX Late spring saw the introduction of many new IBM PC AT-compatible computers. By mid- May, new 80286-based systems had been announced by Kaypro, ITT, Compaq, TeleVideo, Corona, Texas Instruments, Zenith, NCR, Tomcat, and Basic Time. Another multiuser AT- compatible computer, available from MAD Computer in both floor and desktop models, will be sold only to other manufacturers. Wang also disclosed that it is developing an AT- compatible system. Intertec, West Columbia, SC, has redesigned its HeadStart computer, replacing its 8086 processor with an 80286 and eliminating its 3"-inch disk drive. The HeadStart ATS's stan- dard 256K bytes of RAM can be expanded to 3 megabytes: the computer also includes serial, parallel, and network interfaces. The basic HeadStart ATS is priced at $I895 without disk drives. A dual 5"-inch disk-drive add-on unit is $495 extra. Intertec also announced several 8OI86-based file servers for its MultiLAN proprietary polling network: a $695 inter- face card also allows IBM PCs to be attached to the network. Network Products Announced IBM PCs and Macintoshes can communicate using two new networking products. 3Com an- nounced EtherMac, which allows Macintoshes and IBM PCs to link 3Com's 3Server Ethernet network file server to AppleTalk networks. Another product, IBMacBridge from Tangent, is a $595 expansion card with software linking the IBM PC to the AppleTalk network and Apple's LaserWriter printer. Separately, Vianetics announced ViaNet, which links MS-DOS- and UNIX-based computers. Rather than requiring a central file server, ViaNet simply treats each node on the network as a separate disk subdirectory, addressable using standard MS-DOS or UNIX path names. ViaNet will be available only to other manufacturers: Tandy, Wang, and several other firms have already licensed the software. Add-on Makers Support Expanded-Memory Specification Many of the companies that make expansion cards for the IBM PC have announced memory cards that meet the expanded-memory-interface SPecification announced by Lotus and Intel in late April. Maynard Electronics. STB, Quadram. Tecmar. Mega-Omega Systems. Emulex/Persyst. and AST' Research all announced boards supporting the specification. which uses bank switching to allow application programs to directly address up to 4 megabytes of RAM. Most cards will be available in midsummer. They will be priced from $349 to $399 with the first bank of memory installed and can be expanded to 2 megabytes each. Mosaic Unveils 1-2-3 Twin Mosaic Software, Cambridge, MA. unveiled a $145 spreadsheet it says is compatible with Lotus I-2-3. Mosaic's Twin has a user interface and features Similar to those in the Lotus product. but initial versions of the product will not be able to read and write 1-2-3 spread- sheet files. Rather than offering graphics identical to Lotus 1-2-3, Twn's graphics module is derived from earlier products the company developed. Two other companles--Borland International and Paperback Software--are reportedly developing low-cost spreadsheet programs compatible with I-2-3. but neither company has formally announced or set availability dates for those products. NANOBYTES Congress has repealed a law requiring home computer owners to keep a complete daily log of computer use in order to claim business-use tax deductions. The law still requires some record keeping of computer use to support business-use claims .... Novix Corp., Cupertino, CA, has unveiled the NC4000, an 8-MHz 16-bit microprocessor that executes FORTH words as its machine language .... MicroPro plans to introduce a new word processor in mid- summer, priced at less than $200. The company says the new program will have a user in- terface unlike .those of WordStar and' WordStar 2000 .... Acuity Computer, Austin, TX, an- nounced The Shell, a $100 program that can either replace or enhance the Finder .... Frunz Inc,, Berkeley, CA, planned to begin shipping Franz LISP for AT&T's UNIX PC this month. Franz also expects to provide a complete Common LISP for the UNIX PC by late August .... Prometheus unveiled a 512K-byte buffer plug-in card for its ProModem, which can be used to buffer incoming and outgoing electrdnlc mall or as a printer buffer: the buf- fer also provides password and callback security features The buffer card without memory is $149 and can use 16K-, 64K-, or 256K-bit chips .... Intel is now providing samples of IO- and 12-MHz versions of the 80286 processor .... Brother unveiled the TwinWriter, a $1300 printer with both daisy-wheel and dot-matrix print elements,... ITT and NEC both in- troduced new speech-.recognition products for the IBM PC and compatible computers. ITT's $1350 Voice Communications System can recognize up to 200 different words and also features voice playback and phone features. NEC's SAR-IO Voice Plus supports a 250-word vocabulary for $1495..;. Apple announced in April that it would stop production of the Macintosh XL, originally introduced as the Lisa in January 1983 .... Canon announced the A-200, a $2995 20-pound IBM-compatible transportable computer with an 80 Character by 25-line LCD. Standard features include a built-in 300/1200-bps modern, composite video out- put, two 5"-inch disk drives, parallel and serial ports, and 256K bytes of RAM .... Linguistic Products, The Woodlands, TX, announced two languagetranslation programs for the IBM PC. English/Spanish and Spanish/English programs are $490 each or $790 together .... Kyocera, which manufactures computer products for several other companies, announced its first retail product: a 1200-bps modem. The $665 KMI20OS will Include a copy of Microsoft's Access communications program. Kyocera also announcecf a lOpage per-minute, 300-dot-per-inch laser printer that it will sell to other manufacturers Personal Touch, San Jose, CA, announced a touchscreen that can be added to Apple IIs and IBM PCs through a standard joystick port. The Touch Window will cost $200 for the Apple II and $225 for the IBM PC when it iS shipped later this year .... Datran Corp,, Los Angeles, CA, announced the Modern Accelerator, a '$795 card that encodes English words into tokens. Files encoded with the IBM PC expansion card are reduced to about one third the original size .... Micro Focus has announced a Japanese language version of its COBOL compiler for the IBM PC 5550 and PC AT. In Japan, the compiler. is priced at about $500 .... 'Edsun Laboretodes, Wayland, MA, offers a signal-converter VLSI chip that con- verts the Intel 80286's signals to work with less expensive 8088 peripherals. The CMOS EL286-88 allows the 80286 to operate at 8 MHz while Interacting with 4.77-MHz IBM PC chips. In quantity, the chip costs $44. EXTRACT from -------- ::: Thanks to the Authors . JUST COMPUTERS * AUGUST 1985 AUGUST 1985 JUST COMPUPUTERS TypeReader TROCR 95 Nothing but The Best ExperVision's TypeReader OCR 3.0 for Windows is the most accurate OCR software.