[net.micro] Sage IV hardware and graphics

FISCHER@RU-BLUE.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (08/30/83)

From:  Ron <FISCHER@RU-BLUE.ARPA>

----------------Sage IV
Sage IV has no memory management hardware.  They want speed and that
would slow things down too much.

Sage IV is the II hardware repackaged in larger box with heftier power
supply.

----------------Sage Graphics
The company *may* make an announcement this January about a graphics
system for the Sage.  It will (apparently) not be a bitmapped type
display.  [They seem more interested in business graphics].

Current users of Sages doing graphics have either Visual 550 or
Vectrix displays.  The latter can be connected via a parallel port.
[The Vectrix is similar to the AED 512, about $4000, and uses an 8088
processor].

----------------General description
Systems have a 68000 processor running at 8Mhz without wait states.

All systems start with 256k memory.  +256k memory costs an additional
$500.  

Sage floppy drives hold 640k per DSDD 5.25" diskette.  These do not
use DMA.  They are directly accessed by the processor.  Processor and
disk hardware is claimed to be fast enough to operate without any
sector interleaving.

----------------Some price quotes

(The following units' memory max is 512k bytes)
1 floppy drive, : $3900
2 floppy drives : $4700

(The following units have larger power supply, memory max is 1 megabyte)
1 floppy and 6 Megabyte Wini : $7300
	"    12	"	"    : $7900
	"    18 "	"    : $8500

A local software house in NJ is bringing IDRIS up on the Sage.  It is
supposed to be "Unix-like."

(ron)
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