Sun Microsystems Inc’s trawl of Far Eastern manufacturers to try to achieve a plethora of low-cost Unix machines based on the Sparc RISC that can compete with MS-DOS personal computers and Apple Computer Inc Macintosh last year (CI No 940) has culminated in agreements with just two companies, Taiwanese personal computer manufacturers Datatech Enterprises Co Ltd and Tatung Co. But according to Electronic Engineering Times, a number of Taiwanese companies, including Acer and Mitak, were close to signing with Sun before aggressive sales pitches from Intel and Microsoft Corp convinced them to hold back. The two that have signed – for the Open Look user interface as well as the Sparc design, will be helped with their development work on the Sparc by Taiwan’s Industrial and Technical Research Institute, which also signed for Sun licences.
