SEWALL@UCONNVM.BITNET (12/30/87)
VAPORWARE
Murphy Sewall
From the January 1988 APPLE PULP
H.U.G.E. Apple Club (E. Hartford) News Letter
$15/year
P.O. Box 18027
East Hartford, CT 06118
Permission granted to copy with the above citation
Call the "Bit Bucket" (203) 569-8739
NeXt Month?
The week after the deadline for last month's column,
InfoWorld published a front page story containing details of
the NeXt computers scheduled for introduction during the
first quarter. There will be two computers in cubical black
magnesium cases. Both will be built around the 68030
microprocessor. The "Low-end" model ($5,000) will have
4-Mbytes of RAM, a 17 inch, flat-tension mask, monochrome
display and a 40-Mbyte hard disk. The more expensive model
($9,000) will have 8-Mbytes of RAM, a 16 inch, color
display, and a 200-Mbyte hard disk. Both computers will
feature a proprietary bus and use the Unix operating system
with Display Postscript. - InfoWorld 23 November
Accelerated Mac II.
Both MacPeak Systems of Austin, Texas and Dove Computer of
Wilmington, North Carolina plan to ship 20 MHz 68030
expansion cards for the Mac II in March. MacPeak has
announced a price of $1,995 for the board. AST Research of
Irvine, California, Radius Inc., of San Jose, California,
and TSI Inc., of Eugene, Oregon also are rumored to be
developing 68030 based expansion boards for the Mac II. AST
also will announce soon a 80386-based MS-DOS coprocessor for
the Mac II. - PC Week 24 November
Color Lasers!
By the end of next year, QMS of Mobile, Alabama expects to
be shipping a 300-dpi full-color laser printer. The bad
news is that it will weigh 200 pounds and cost $30,000.
- InfoWorld 30 November
New Laser Printers.
Apple Computer plans to introduce a new generation of laser
printers later this month. There will be three new models
including the long awaited (see November and December 1986
Vaporware columns) Personal LaserWriter based on Quickdraw
imaging and priced at roughly the same $2,500 as General
Computer's Personal Laserwriter which uses Quickdraw as well
(see last September's column). Taxan Corporation also has
announced plans to introduce a Quickdraw printer for
delivery this Spring. A second Apple printer will be an
enhanced version of the current Laserwriter built around
Canon's new "SX" engine (see last October's column). The
newest configuration will be a high performance model
equipped with a Motorola 68020 microprocessor.
InfoWorld 23 November
Accelerated IIgs.
Western Design Center of Mesa, Arizona reports that Apple
has been buying quantities of the 12-MHz version of the
65816 (so far the only machine it's used in is the IIgs).
Could the rumored IIgs accelerator board (see last January's
Vaporware column) finally be on the way? - InCider January
Mac Star?
Micropro, makers of the Word Star word processing program,
has announced a new Macintosh product for shipment in June.
The software will combine conventional word processing
functions with features of desk top publishing programs such
as graph importation and layout capability.
- Random Access 28 November
The IIgs Office System?
Look for lots of new integrated software for the IIgs this
Spring. If integrating three programs is good, wouldn't
integrating six be even better? Remember the "Lisa Office
System?" That was seven programs wasn't it? Hmmm.....
- InCider January
"Low-Cost" Mac Monitors.
Monitor vendors Power R and CTX both recently announced new
monochrome displays for the Mac, and CTX said it is readying
a (relatively) low-cost color display. "Mac Larger" from
Power R is a 12 inch, monochrome display for $449 that
provides 70% more image than the internal Mac screen while
retaining the 512 by 342 pixel resolution. CTX's $399
monochrome monitor will be twice the size of the Mac
display. Their color monitor ($799) provides 800 by 600
resolution, accepts Mac II analog video, and has a 35-KHz
scan rate. - InfoWorld 23 November
Color Laptop.
A host of Japanese firms are developing color LCD flat
screens for laptop computers. Today's best guess is that
economical computers (only $400 more than monochrome
versions) using these screens won't be available for at
least two years. - PC Week 24 November
New "Flat" Screens.
Tektronix has announced a new "hypertwist" Liquid Crystal
Display (LCD) which expands the twist angle from the 180
degrees of supertwist technology to 270 degrees. In
addition to higher contrast and a wider viewing angle, the
new display has a lower power consumption. Two new
Electroluminescent Displays (ELD) will be out later this
year for under $800. A company from Finland has
demonstrated the 600 by 640 pixel "Finlux" screen on a
Dyna-Mac (the "Flat Mac"), and Planar Systems has announced
an ELD with a 160 degree viewing angle and power consumption
under 10 watts. - Random Access 12 December
4-Mbit Dynamic RAM.
Toshiba America has begun limited manufacturing of the next
generation of memory chips. Production shipments of the new
4-megabit chips (four times the size of today's largest
production memory chips), which several other firms also
have under development is scheduled for the third quarter
(can the 32-Mbyte RAM personal computer be far away?).
- InfoWorld 30 November
Bigga than a Giga.
IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose has announced a
breakthrough in recording technology that will make it
theoretically possible to store up to 1.25 gigabytes of data
on a 3.5 inch disk. Current recording heads cannot take
full advantage of the new technique which involves using
semiconductor fabrication (electron beam photolithography)
methods to etch 0.5-micron-wide tracks onto a disk surface.
- InfoWorld 23 November
Micro Floppy Drives.
Sony has announced a 1-Mbyte, 2 inch disk drive for use in
laptop computers, and Hitachi plans to introduce a 2.5 inch
floppy drive. - Random Access 12 December
Assorted IBM Rumors.
Coming in April - a PS/2 Model 90 with a RISC (Reduced
Instruction Set Coprocessor) expected to operate at 32-MHz
and run PC Excel seven times faster than the Mac II
version. Big Blue also is poised to roll out a true "what
you see is what you get" 8.5 by 11 (page size) display with
incredibly sharp graphic resolution especially for desktop
publishing applications. Wyse Technology's lawyers have put
that firm's Micro Channel clone motherboard on hold while
they examine IBM's patents more carefully. The President of
Word Perfect says the cost of OS/2 along with the added
memory and other add-ons needed to take advantage of its
features will be so high that few users will benefit.
- PC Week 24 November, InfoWorld 30 November and 7 December,
and Random Access 21 November
Self-Serve Software.
Brother International is beta testing a software "vending
machine." Although it looks like a soda machine, it's
really a computer terminal and disk copying machine tied to
a mainframe. It has a catalog of 1,500 titles which can be
demonstrated on the built in display. Software can be
ordered with a bank credit card and downloaded on either 3.5
or 5.25 inch disks. Brother expects to begin installing the
machines in the U.S. later this year.
- Random Access 28 November
Reach for the Sky.
The US Department of Agriculture has encountered an
unanticipated difficulty in its project to develop robot
fruit pickers. To contain costs, the robots were designed
with monochrome scanners. Unfortunately, to the robots, an
orange has the same size, shape, and brightness as a small
cloud. Current robot pickers are often hung up literally
reaching for the clouds. The USDA says it's back to the
drawing board - this time using color.
- Random Access 21 NovemberKAPFFER@DMZRZU71.BITNET (Matthias Kapffer) (01/11/88)
There are some other 65816 based systems:
- Communicator from Acorn, a British firm; the machine is only sold there.
- Space-65 from IBS, a German manufacturer; this is an Apple //e-compatible
board offering a 65816 running at 4 MHz and the possibility to use the full
address space on expanded slots. May be out of business today.
- at least two kits developed as projects from German hardware orientated
computer magazines available from mail order houses.
- an accelerator card for the Commodore 64 utilizing a 65816 at 4 MHz with an
opportunity to expand RAM to 1 MByte (also a German product).
Note that most of the above infos were taken from ads.
Matthias Kapffer
<KAPFFER@DMZRZU71.BITNET>
Please note that my former account (MAT6013) is no longer valid.