jackg@tektronix.UUCP (Jack Griffith) (12/06/84)
[................] I received the literature concerning S1 (See July 84 issue of Computer Design for a description of this OS) from Multi Solutions a couple of days ago and they claim to have configurations RIGHT NOW (DON'T BELIEVE EVEN THIS CLAIM UNTIL YOU'VE READ FURTHER) for the following machines: DataMedia 932 IBM 9000 NCR Tower CompuPro System 68k Dual CPU/68000M IBC ENSIGN Sage 6 (A misprint; should be Sage IV according to Multi Sol.) SORD 68 Pertek 3200 The literature is dated July 1984 and has claims for the following machines and dates: By 9/84: IBM PC NEC APC Televideo TS 1603 Convergent Tech AWS, IWS Burroughs B20/B22/B25 By 10/84: HP Series 200 Model 16 Apple Lisa TRS 80 COMPAQ Ports for the following chips, dates, and prices: (The prices quoted from the literature are for pre-configured systems with all advertised utilites; OEM configurable versions are around $100.00 less; languages (C, Fortran, Basic, Pascal) are another ~350.00 ) 68000 Now 950.00 Z80 Now 375.00 8080 Now 250.00 8085 Now 250.00 8086/88 7/84 495.00 80186 8/84 600.00 80286 10/84 1100.00 16032 12/84 950.00 I called Multi Solutions and asked about new literature with revised dates and they said that the date for the 8086 was now 1st quarter of 1985 and the others were proportionally pushed out (no new literature yet). I then asked about availability and current installations. Their reply was that they are currently negotiating with OEM distributers (that supposedly would also distribute single total configurations), as they don't have the customer support available to contend with marketing the product themselves. The most promising distributer happened to be based in Sweden they said. They also say that they have "only" been advertising since 1/84 and wouldn't get the customer base they want by retail marketing themselves. The final word is, as I see it (perhaps someone can dispute this), there are NO current installations (outside of possible test sites) NOR is the product available currently. Jack Griffith, Tektronix, Inc. jackg@tektronix.UUCP MaBell: (503) 627-6352