alanj@ibmpcug.co.uk (Alan Jay) (11/09/89)
Compaq anounced the SYSTEMPRO, in Houston, on Monday a floor standing machine with an impressive specification. At its most powerful it can contain two 33MHz 486 (when intel deliver) and up to 265Mb of RAM and 1.6Gb of disk storage. The Systempro uses an EISA bus with the processors and memory on Compaq's own propritory bus. This arrangement allows you to plug in either 33MHz 386 or 33MHz 486 processor boards (any combination up to 2). The disk contorollers use disk array technology to provide very fast throghput and/or high data integrity either using disk mirroring, duplexing or most interestingly what Compaq call data guarding. Data guarding provides a mainframe like disk farm to PC users. The system uses only 4 disks with one of them holding the error correcting data allowing or a single drive to go down without the user loosing any data. Even better when you replace the disk drive the data that should have been on it is recreated. All this functionallity is built into the drive array controller and does not need software support. The machines cost from $15,999 (240Mb) to $25,999 (840Mb) [10,995 (pounds sterling) to 14,995] for single processor 386. Additional 386 boards cost arround $3,500 and all machines come with 4Mb of memory. If you want more memory 32Mb of 4Mbit Dram will set you back $21,999. 486 procvessor boards were not anounced on monday they will be when there are some 486 chips that work. So there is no pricing as yet. Also Compaq anounced a desktop 25MHz 486. The twin processors can be used by Compaq's new version of OS/2 Lan manager (lan man on one processor and an SQL server on the other) or SCO Unix which provides true symetrical use of the processors. alan jay alanj@ibmpcug.co.uk and by simply replacing that drive all your data will a selection of eit -- Automatic Disclaimer: The views expressed above are those of the author alone and may not represent the views of the IBM PC User Group.