Acorn Computers Plc yesterday unveiled its long-promised Unix workstation based on its Acorn RISC Machine 32-bit microprocessor, bringing the machine in at a competitive UKP4,000 with a wealth of software. Called the R140, the machine comes with 4Mb main memory, 60Mb Winchester, 1Mb 3.5 floppy – both capacities unformatted – and four expansion slots, one of which is occupied by Ethernet and thin Ethernet adaptors. The UKP4,000 price also includes a standard monochrome monitor and serial and parallel ports. Software bundled in the price includes the Acorn RISC iX implementation of Berkeley 4.3 Unix with System V extensions, X Window 11.2 and the X.desktop user interface from IXI Ltd of Cambridge. Also included are Sun Microsystems’ Network File System, TCP/IP, Yellow Pages and X11 client-server software. For those who don’t want Ethernet, the machine is available for UKP3,500. The prices also include a 12-month support package with on-site maintenance, teelphone hotline help and diagnostics from Granada Group Plc’s Granada Microcare. Monitors supported include ones putting up as many as 1,152 by 900 pixels mono chrome, up to 640 by 480 pixels colour. Acorn is promising X/Open and Posix compliance by year-end, and on the hardware front, an SCSI board for external disks, tapes, scanners and laser printers, and a floating point co-processor are promised. The R140 runs MS-DOS and Acorn’s RISC OS as alternatives to Unix and is available now from Hugh Symons Distribution Services Ltd in Poole, Dorset. Based in Cambridge, Acorn is 79%-owned by Olivetti SpA.
