Irvine, California-based technology holding company Helionetics Inc has signed a binding letter of intent to acquire Sentinel Systems Inc, which is designing the Sentry-E fault-tolerant computer in Horsham, Pennsylvania and has a major telecommunications company lined up as its first customer. Terms of the letter call for Helionetics to provide $750,000 in working capital for the rest of this year, and to pay up to 1.4m in new Helionetics shares, issue of these being tied to Sentinel achieving pre-set performance goals between now and the end of next year. The Sentry-E machine, built around 50MHz 80486 chips, is due to ship in the fourth quarter. The system is hardware compatible with any Intel iAPX-86-based computer and uses the EISA bus; it is designed to run under the Unix, OS/2 and Pick operating systems. Designed as a superserver or mid-range multi-tasking system it has a 400Mb drive, 16Mb memory, SCSI adaptor, and serial parallel port. An entry-level system is $49,500; extra memory and processors are available. Sentinel has been working on the concept of the machine for eight years and says it will be supplying the systems to five major customers, for use in insurance as well as telecommunications applications, in the third quarter. It is expected to see initial revenues from the Sentry-E as in the fourth quarter, with first-year sales put at about $25m.
