As anticipated (CI No 2,688), Digital Equipment Corp’s Alcor boxes have been announced as the PCI-based AlphaStation 600 models 5/266 and 5/300 and are accompanied by lower prices for the existing AlphaStation 200 family. DEC claims the 266MHz model outperforms Hewlett-Packard Co’s 7 35/125 by 65%. The 5/266 is claimed to run at 288 SPECint92 and 428 SPECfp92, while the 6/300 comes in at 334 SPECint92 and 503 SPECfp92. The 300MHz model also logged 639.6 jobs per minute on an AIM benchmark. With Digital Unix or OpenVMS, the Model 600 5/266 with 32Mb of RAM, a 2Mb cache and a 17 colour monitor sells for $31,000. A Model 600 5/300, similarly configured, but with 64Mb of RAM, a 4Mb cache and a 21 monitor, costs $45,000. Only the 5/266 is available now; the 300MHz machine is available in quarter four. Upgrades to 5/300 are available for $10,000 to customers that buy the 5/266 until September. The company is also cutting tags on the AlphaStation 200s, its entry level workstations. DEC’s 4/100, 4/166 and 4/233 models are now priced at $5,000, $11,000 and $14,100, respectively, down from $6,000, $12,055 and $19,930. The AlphaStation 600s are available with Digital Unix and OpenVMS; NT is due in the fourth quarter. DEC, which has abandoned OSF/1 versions in favour of its own Digital Unix name, said it will release Digital Unix 4.0 by the year end. The company is currently at version 3.2c. The company hopes to have 4.0, which may be preceded by other dot releases, to comply with Spec 1170 – the Single Unix specification. DEC’s Unix people said that they have 95% of the application programming interfaces. For graphics performance, DEC offers L Series mid-range ZLxp graphics accelerators and the Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp Freedom Series engines. The L1 costs $3,000; L2 from $6,000. The Freedom Series, due out in October, cost $65,000, $83,000 and $134,000 respectively for models 3150, 3250, and 3400.
