MAI Basic Four Inc is another of those US companies like Tandon Corp and Commodore International Ltd that do the bulk of their business in Europe – primarily West Germany and the Netherlands for Basic Four – and these days, Europe and Unix are synonymous. Accordingly, in the next step in its move to phase out in-house manufacture of machines, the Tustin, California firm has turned to Sequent Computer Systems Inc for a high-end machine capable of running Unix alongside its proprietary Boss/VS Business Operating System Software, which was written specifically to run applications in Business Basic. The company announced a GPx 5070 with two to four 25MHz 80386s and optional 80387s supporting up to 192 users, and a GPx 6070 with up to 10 CPUs to support up to 360 users, under Boss/VS and Sequent’s Dynix multiprocessor Unix in MAI’s Dual Universe. MAI claims to have done a lot of work on the Sequent processors, adding a VMEbus, subsystem for adding power supplies, and one to combine printer and port functions. The new machines, to be upgradable with 80486s next year, complement the company’s GPx 40 32-user 80386 uniprocessor from Acer America Inc. The 5070 starts at $89,500 and the 6070 starts at $107,000; the succeed the Boss-only MPx and Advanced Series families.
