Comdex Wrapup: Unix, OS/2, Bus Talk, and Boards
 
 
Once again, this year's Comdex Fall spawned no major revolutions,
but there were a number of particularly interesting developments.
 
The eleventh Comdex show started out larger than ever, with more
than 120,000 attendees. But, as always, the most notable things
about the show were not the crowds waiting for cabs and buses, or
the numerous diversions of Las Vegas, but the interesting
products that would pop up as if by magic.
 
The most expected items at the show were also the most
disappointing. Six months ago, we expected that there might be
huge quantities of 486 machines and EISA systems at this Comdex.
And although there were a number of 486 machines displayed,
almost none were actually shipping, the problem being a bug found
in the current version of 486 chips. Bugs -- this time with EISA
support chips -- also held back the EISA systems. A small number
of fragile-looking EISA computers were displayed, but again, none
were shipping.
 
One of the more interesting 486-based systems was from Tandon
Corp., a new EISA computer that the company claims is twice the
speed of its 33-MHz 386 machine. Called the Tandon 486/25, the
new machine includes a separate 64-bit-wide data path between the
CPU and memory, a 64K-byte cache with Tandon's MultiCache
control, and the PowerPoster "smart" write buffer. Together,
these features produce "better than zero wait state performance,"
the company claims.
 
The Tandon 486/25 will sell for $9000 without a hard disk. Like
most 486 and EISA systems, it will not be available until the
first quarter of '90 at the earliest.
 
 
OS/2: Closer, But Still Not Here
Equally high expectations for OS/2 applications were likewise
found wanting. Although notable announcements were made --
particularly Lotus 1-2-3/G and WordPerfect for Presentation
Manager, the number of shipping OS/2 programs is still rather
small. Still, the announcement by the lately conservative Lotus
indicates that 1-2-3/G should be here soon, and if that program
lives up to its promise, it could cause a major sea change in the
popularity of OS/2. And, with a memory requirement of about 5
megabytes, it could singlehandedly cause a drought in memory
chips.
 
Another important OS/2 announcement was Microsoft's long-awaited
version of Word for OS/2 with Presentation Manager. It will be
available for $495 "sometime in 1990." The application will be
Microsoft's second for OS/2 PM, following last month's shipment
of Excel for PM. Like Excel,the new Word will offer largely the
same features as its Windows predecessor but with the added
functionality of OS/2.
 
Somewhat related to OS/2 was a demonstration by Lotus of its
Notes groupware application, which the company first talked about
around two years ago. The company will reveal pricing in
December, when the product is expected to ship. Notes is a
server-based free-form database manager for sharing files and
messages across a network. It pretty much resembles a cross
between a personal information manager such as Lotus Agenda (from
which it can pull files), a file viewer and grouping tool like
Traveling Software's ViewLink, and a messaging bulletin board.
Notes memos can contain fields for easy cross-referencing and
hypertext links to other documents or files. Lotus said that both
DOS/Windows and OS/2-PM versions will be available for Novell,
3Com, and IBM LANs.
 
 
Unix: The Surprise Hit
The big surprise at this year's Comdex was Unix. Yes, that's
right: Unix. Santa Cruz Operation's Open Desktop environment was
prominently displayed in a number of manufacturers' booths. With
its well-designed graphics screens, Open Desktop functioned not
just as a token gesture for the Unix fanatics, but as a bonafide
drawing card for even the staunchest DOS user.
 
Related to the growing interest in Unix was a newborn interest in
multiprocessing. The recent announcements of multiprocessing
hardware by Acer, Mitac, and, most important, Compaq, focused
attention on multiprocessing software -- or rather the lack of
such. The strongest contender for this rather vacant niche is
Corollary, which is working with SCO on a multiprocessing version
of Unix. Eventually we may also see a multiprocessing version of
OS/2, to go with the recently announced multiprocessing version
of Microsoft's LAN Manager, but don't hold your breath. LAN
Manager may need multiprocessing to survive, but for OS/2 it
would just be one more added feature on Microsoft's "to do" list.
 
One of the hot buzzwords at the show was multimedia. But although
IBM and others beat the drum (literally) for this new idea, there
was little concrete support for it in terms of products that you
can buy right now. But today's dearth means tomorrow's
opportunity. Expect much more in this area at next year's show.
 
 
Battle of the Boards
As was expected, there was an attempt to make Comdex the Big
Showdown for the MCA/EISA battle. The IBM booth included several
small walls of Micro Channel Architecture boards, a small number
of which were the prized bus-mastering types. IBM also went out
of its way to invite a fair number of third-party developers in
to show off future bus-master MCA boards. These included an ESDI
disk-drive controller (from Core International), a serial port
controller (from Comtral), a 486 coprocessor card (from Aox), and
an 88000 coprocessor card (from Prometa). In fact, the general
mood at the IBM booth, which was one of the largest at the show,
was rather relaxed. There was an uncharacteristically large
number of "technology demonstrations"; i.e., products that IBM is
not sure about yet and which might never make it to market.
 
The most interesting of these was a new high-contrast color
display for the IBM Model P70 portable. The screen uses
active-matrix technology to achieve a very impressive and fast
display. Another interesting display was the "PS/2 on a Card," an
entire PS/2 Model 55SX on a Micro Channel card sans disk
controller. (Actually, the circuitry now takes up two cards, but
it will be reduced to one in the future, IBM says.) Insert a few
of these in a PS/2 Model 80, add the necessary monitors and
keyboards, and you have a self-enclosed high-speed network of
systems. Similar cards have been introduced for PC- and AT-style
machines, but this is the first from IBM and the first in the
Micro Channel format. Of course, pricing and availability
information were not available for any of these technology
demonstrations.
 
On the EISA side of the fence, Compaq had its own wall of boards,
which, despite the large number of ISA cards available, was
rather small. About 17 of the boards were true EISA cards, many
of which featured bus-mastering.
 
An example of EISA bus-mastering power was provided by ALR. This
computer maker showed off its forthcoming EISA 486 system and
included a prototype EISA bus-mastering disk-caching card from
Mylex. According to the BYTE Lab benchmarks, this card flies.
Based on our preliminary tests, the Mylex disk controller is more
than twice as fast as the fastest caching disk controller card
previously tested.
 
 
WingZ for Windows
Informix Software announced a commitment to port its WingZ
spreadsheet to additional operating environments in 1990,
including DOS with Windows and OSF/Motif. The company had already
announced plans to support the NeXT computer and OS/2 PM in
addition to the current Macintosh version. No pricing or exact
availability were announced, but the software was shown running
on all the new platforms at the Informix booth. The NeXT version
and support for DEC VAX computers via CL/1 is expected in the
first quarter of 1990, with the remainder later in the year.
Motif versions are planned for Unix workstations such as the
DECstation 3100 and systems from HP/Apollo, as well as for Open
Desktop.
 
 
Laptops and New Screens
In addition to showing off its 20-pound color LCD portable, Sharp
also disclosed its plans for other LCD technologies. The company
says it has now developed "film-compensated supertwist LCDs,"
which are thinner and lighter than double supertwist and transmit
30 percent more light. In addition, new "edge-lit" backlighting
that uses only two CCFTs (cold cathode fluorescent tubes) instead
of the usual four will also reduce weight, thickness, and power
consumption. Sample units incorporating these technologies are
supposed to be available in early 1990. In the area of
active-matrix color LCDs, Sharp said it will soon deliver 4- and
6-inch thin-film-transistor (TFT) LCDs for the OEM marketplace.
 
 
Faster Optical Storage
As usual, Winchester, tape, and optical drive makers were much in
evidence at Comdex, and the accent was on speed. Perhaps the most
interesting announcement came from tiny Ocean Microsystems, a US
subsidiary of Nakamichi: the first 3.5-inch rewritable
magneto-optical drive subsystem. The Ocean Vista 130, packaged in
both internal and external configurations, uses new single-sided
3.5-inch optical media from Hoescht; Ocean claims a fast average
access time of 28 milliseconds and a storage capacity of 130
megabytes.
 
Ocean says it will provide interfaces for ATs, PS/2s, and Macs.
Standards for 3.5-inch rewritable optical disks are yet to be
finalized, but an ANSI/ISO committee approved a draft standard
two weeks ago with which Ocean says it complies. Preproduction
units will be delivered in mid-1990, the company says; prices
have not yet been announced.
 
Advanced Graphic Applications (AGA), which sells 5.25-inch
rewritable optical subsystems based on both the Sony and Ricoh
drives, announced a new product founded on the Maxoptics
magneto-optical drive from Storage Technology. The new AGA
DR-1000 offers both the fastest performance yet available in an
ANSI/ISO-compliant drive and the option of a non-standard media
format with 1 gigabyte of storage capacity, AGA says. (The
same drive can accept standard 650M-byte cartridges or
non-ISO-compliant 1G-byte cartridges from Maxtor.)
 
AGA says that in use the Maxoptics drive is as much as three
times faster than the Sony. The DR-1000 will be available in the
first quarter of 1990, the company says, complete with SCSI
interface and driver software; the price was not announced.
 
Perhaps the most significant announcement in mass storage came in
the area of drive controllers. Data Technology, a division of
Qume Corp., unveiled the DTC6280SE-15C, a bus-mastering EISA bus
controller that offers a kitchen sink of interfaces: support for
four ESDI drives, four floppy drives, and a SCSI port, or a total
of 15 devices. The board offers full 32-bit bus support with
burst mode at the 33-MHz data-transfer rate of EISA, and includes
up to 4 megabytes of on-board cache memory. The controller will
be used in some upcoming EISA systems and will be generally
available in the first quarter of 1990, Data Technology says. A
stripped-down model without floppy or SCSI support and only 512K
of cache will sell for $520 in OEM quantities.
 
 
Graphics: 34010 and 8514 Abound
Many graphics boards using the Texas Instruments 34010 processor,
and a few using the 34020, were on display at the show. Most
34010 boards are now in the range of $1000, and one even lists
for $695.
 
But straight 8514/A-compatible boards were also prominent. ATI
Technologies introduced two interesting cards, and Western
Digital has expanded its Paradise line to include several 8514/A
cards. (Last spring, WD first disclosed the register definitions
of 8514/A and then announced a VLSI chip set for the standard.)
The Paradise 8514/A Plus card works in AT-bus machines and will
be available next month for $999. With 512K of on-board RAM, it
can generate 16 colors at 1024 by 768 resolution on interlaced or
non-interlaced (non-flickering) monitors.
 
WD also announced a version of the Paradise 8514/A for the Micro
Channel bus that will sell for $1099 and be available in
December.
 
 
Hype for the Wiz
The most hyped-up announcement at the entire show was for a new
input device from CalComp, a formerly low-key company known for
its plotters and digitizing tablets. The new entrant, called the
Wiz, is a cross between an optical mouse and a graphics pad. Like
other mice, the Wiz is a hand-held pointer with buttons, but like
digitizers, it has a more precise pointer -- in this case, a
clear plastic lens with cross hairs attached at the front of the
mouse -- and a compact desktop tablet into which applications
templates are inserted. There are three buttons on the top of the
mouse and buttons on either side: the side buttons let you
"switch" the top buttons, for a total of six settings.
 
The Wiz has interfaces to work on Macs and PCs (running DOS,
Windows, and OS/2), and it sports 1000-dots-per-inch resolution.
Its optical design means there are no moving parts, and the
"window" allows for very accurate tracing. But the real advantage
of the Wiz is in its templates. CalComp plans to provide them for
most major applications, including PageMaker, WordPerfect, Excel,
and MacDraw. On the templates, the entire menu structure of the
application is visible at once, so it's easy to find which menu
to choose for a particular function and to follow the path of the
selections. Furthermore, four of the mouse settings are
programmable, allowing easy shortcuts for frequent operations.
The Wiz lists for $249 ($199 until March) and templates cost $49
each. It is available now.
 
 
More Support for Windows
Xerox Desktop Software introduced three new versions of Ventura
Publisher, including the first for Windows and OS/2 with PM, and
said it would rebundle the software to incorporate all the
features previously found in three distinct packages, the normal
Ventura Publisher, the Professional Extension, and the Network
Server edition.
 
All three packages, including an update of the original version
for DOS with GEM, will sell for a suggested price of $895. The
DOS release is scheduled for March 1990, with the Windows and PM
versions due sometime in the second quarter. The traditional
version will be enhanced with support for longer footnotes,
better support for HPGL (Hewlett-Packard's graphics language),
and new import file formats. Professional Extension features
added to the core version will allow interactive table creation,
equation editing, vertical justification, and cross-referencing.
The networking features (for Novell, 3Com, and IBM networks)
support multiuser browsing and editing as well as resource
sharing and printer spooling.
 
 
Contacts:
 
CalComp, 2411 W. La Palma Ave., Anaheim, CA 92801, (714)
821-2000;
 
Information Integration Inc., 901 Russell Ave., Gaithersburg,
MD 20879  (301) 840-8977; fax (301) 840-5366;
 
 
Tandon, 609 Science Dr., Moorpark, CA 93021; (805)
378-3010; fax (805) 378-3099
 
Xerox Desktop Software, 1301 Ridgeview Dr., Lewisville, TX
75067; (800) 822-8221
 
 
                              --- BYTEWeek Staff
 
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