msg@houxl.UUCP (10/24/83)
Recently I talked to some friends in the Gartner Group (a market research company in Stamford, Ct) about the status of IBM's PCjr. Apparently, IBM has been sampling the PCjr for months. It is not based on Intel's 80188 CPU... it IS based on Intel's 8088 CPU (as previously speculated). IBM is patiently waiting for the Christmas buying season for the most beneficial time to offer the new PCjr for sale. It has been reported that IBM can ONLY produce about 100K PCjr.s before the end of the year. Therefore, an early announcement would result in shortages before the Holidays. Also, Apple is expected to make a PC announcement January, 1984. Ideally, IBM would like to "de-fuse" Apple's announcement by announcing the PCjr "on the heels" of the Apple announcement. Bottom line... IBM is expected to make the FORMAL PCjr announcement the end of the first or second week in November. If anyone has more info on IBM's Token Ring Architecture LAN for their PC line please post them &/or send mail to me at houxl!msg... Thanks!