SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (Murph Sewall) (11/29/88)
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the December 1988 APPLE PULP
H.U.G.E. Apple Club (E. Hartford) News Letter
$15/year
P.O. Box 18027
East Hartford, CT 06118
Call the "Bit Bucket" (203) 569-8739
Permission granted to copy with the above citation
MS-DOS to Unix Recompiler.
Hunter Systems of Mountain View, California and Motorola
have announced a software utility, XDOS, that will translate
MS-DOS applications into binary code that can run directly
on Motorola 68000 and 88000 family processors running the
Unix operating system. Motorola says that, beginning
January 1, XDOS will be bundled with each version of Unix V
3.2 it sells. Hunter officials emphasize that XDOS is not a
DOS environment emulator such as SoftPC from Insignia
Solutions (see last December's column). Instead XDOS
"decompiles" DOS applications, including all popular DOS
business programs, into an intermediate code and then
recompiles the intermediate into a runtime binary that will
run nearly as fast as native Unix code (about three times PC
AT speed according to Hunter officials).
- InfoWorld 7 November and PC Week 7 November
Accelerated Apple IIgs.
Applied Engineering expects to ship the TransWarp GS
accelerator board that will double the speed of a standard
Apple IIgs before Christmas for a retail price of less than
$400. - A+ December
PS/2 at 14 MIPS.
Intel is developing a bus master chip which will break the
master-slave relationship between coprocessors and the main
CPU and allow true multiple bus mastering and
multiprocessing on Micro Channel Architecture (MCA) personal
computers. A board with the bus master will accommodate any
coprocessor, including an 80386 CPU. The implementation of
this multiprocessing capacity in a four processor PS/2 (at
3.5 MIPS per 803386 CPU) would improve performance to a
blazing 14 MIPS. Deliveries of the new bus master are
anticipated after mid-1989. - InfoWorld 14 November
Amiga 3000.
Commodore is about to introduce the hermaphroditic Motorola
(19.4 MHz) 68030/Intel (20 MHz) 80386 dual-CPU model 3000
(see last May's column). The machine has five Amiga slots,
5 PC-AT type slots, 2 Mbytes of RAM (expandable to 16
Mbytes), a 68882 math coprocessor, a megapixel display, and
an 80 Mbyte SCSI disk drive. The announced price is
$5,200. - InfoWorld 7 November
Color Laptops.
By next year, most laptops will come standard with 640 by
480 resolution VGA graphics and color flat panel displays
will begin shipping. Seiko-Epson plans an 80286 laptop that
can display 4096 colors for mid-1989 with an estimated
$7,800 price. Zenith is expected to show it's color LCD
laptop at the Hannover Fair in March.
- InfoWorld 24 October, PC Week 24 October
and Random Access 29 October
Apple II Hyper-clones.
Roger Wagner did demonstrate their HyperStudio program for
the Apple IIgs at September's AppleFest (see September's
column). The expected retail price will be $130. Techware
Corporation displayed a HyperCard like program for 128K
Apple II's (//e, //c, IIgs). The Tutor-Tech program
dynamically combines text and graphics in one $195 program.
- A+ December
PostScript Compatible Color Printer.
Tektronix, of Wilsonville, Oregon will market the first
Adobe PostScript compatible printer with a price tag of less
than $13,000. The printer uses thermal-wax-transfer
technology and will come bundled with an XT/AT bus
controller card containing 8 Mbytes (expandable to 11
Mbytes) of RAM. The card uses a proprietary PostScript
interpreter and also supports the Hewlett-Packard Graphics
Language (HPGL). - PC Week 31 October
Quadruple Laserjet II Resolution.
Microtek Labs is showing a laser printer controller that
increases the resolution of HP Laserjet Series II printers
to 1200 dots per inch. The Microtek GLZ replaces the
standard bottom of a Laserjet II, uses a Motorola 68000
processor, and allows the printer to print individual dots
in 16 shades of gray. The product already works with
Xerox's Ventura Publisher software and support for Aldus
Pagemaker is expected by the time the product ships early
next year. No price has been announced.
- InfoWorld 24 October
Ultradense RAM Chips.
Ramtron Corporation of Colorado Springs has signed a
joint-venture deal with Japan's NMB Semiconductors to
develop "ferroelectric" DRAM chips based on ceramics rather
than silicon. Ferroelectric material can hold up to 250
times more electrons than silicon making it feasible to
produce 16 Megabit chips more easily and cheaply than
silicon DRAM chips with the same memory. The first chips
made under the contract will be 4 Megabits, but the long
term aim is comparatively inexpensive 16 Megabit chips.
- Business Week 14 November
Does OS/2 Matter?
Most developers don't believe OS/2 will replace MS-DOS to
any significant degree before the early 1990's.
Consequently, nineteen months after introduction, only a few
applications are available that make any use of the
operating system's multitasking capabilities and other
features not included in MS-DOS. Many software companies
are porting only their best selling applications until
demand improves. Many buyers are leery of OS/2's apparent
memory requirements. Although IBM and Microsoft both
recommend 2.5 Mbytes of RAM to run OS/2 and DOS compatible
applications, corporate micro managers indicate 4 Mbytes is
a more realistic number (6 Mbytes to run multiple
applications without degrading performance).
- PC Week 7 and 14 November
MS-DOS Wordprocessor Updates.
Microsoft's Word 5.0 is in beta testing and may be released
before New Year's Day. The program provides more
sophisticated text and graphics integration and several
preview functions. Meanwhile WordPerfect expects to release
an interim upgrade for version 5.0 by year's end and version
5.1 in the second quarter of 1989. Version 5.1 will include
the ability to build forms, create and edit tables, and
perform complex equations.
- InfoWorld 24 October and PC Week 24 October
[The Far Side shall return (I hope)]
Murph Sewall Sewall@UCONNVM.BITNET
Business School sewall%uconnvm.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu [INTERNET]
U of Connecticut {rutgers psuvax1 ucbvax & in Europe - mcvax}
!UCONNVM.BITNET!SEWALL [UUCP]
-+- My employer isn't responsible for my mistakes AND vice-versa!
(subject to change without notice; void where prohibited)
"Close enough for government work" - source unknown (naturally ;-)