The company was so uncannily accurate about what the AS/400 announcement would comprise a full two months before the event (CI No 915) that it would be foolhardy to ignore the latest intelligence on IBM’s mid-range garnered by Mid-Range Products Inc of Deerfield Beach, Florida. And what it is saying is that four more AS/400 models will be announced before the end of this year with general availability sometime in mid-1990. The gossip is out of IBM’s AS/400 base in Rochester, Minnesota, and suggests that the arrival of the machines will coincide with availability of Release 3.0 of the OS/400 operating system – the one that is intended to offer full Systems Application Architecture compliance. The new AS/400 models expected are the B70, B80, B90 and B100, taking top end performance up into the 3090 class. On the tape drive problem, Mid Range hears that the feature necessary to attach all the System 38-supported tape drives will be available in June but that IBM has given up on development of a 3480type drive for the machine, and may end up buying a drive in – the 3422 is already bought OEM from Siemens.
