djb (02/01/83)
Rats. /usr/spool out of space, so my last article gets mangled. After some house cleaning, here it is again: I'm fairly sure the add-on CPU cards you are talking about are the MicroCards made by Sritek Inc. (Cleveland, OH). Basically, they take a card with 256K of memory (optionally 512K) and add CPU "modules". CPUs available are: * Z-80 MicroCard * 8086 MicroCard * 68000 MicroCard with XENIX (based on System III) * iAPX 80286 MicroCard with XENIX-286 * 16032 MicroCard with a port of 4.2 BSD (available mid-83) I've got a couple Sritek documents (including Forefront, their "journal") that came from their booth at UNICOM. If you want more details, let me know. Basically, they promised that for <$6000 you can get an IBM PC plus their 68000 board (includes 512K memory) and XENIX. The 8088 becomes an I/O processor, handling the printer, keyboard, display and disk drives. A very, very impressive package. I plan to try and get price info etc. As for XENIX being the best UNIX-based system, I'm not sure. A system called "Uniplus" was advertised at UNICOM and it appears to be a hair better than XENIX. It's basically System III (like XENIX) but has more add-on goodies (C-shell, other Berkeley stuff). Haven't had a chance to make a thorough study of the literature I picked up and compare the finer points of the two systems so the jury is still out, but it's ceratinly worth checking on. David Bryant Bell Labs Columbus, OH (614) 860-4516 (cbosg!djb)