Honeywell Bull Ltd has added three- and four-processor models to its DPS 8000 mainframe family launched last June (CI No 699), as well as two new mass storage subsystems, one from IBM, and new software tools. The three-CPU Model 83 is priced at UKP1.3m, while the four-CPU Model 84 is priced at UKP1.6m. The systems divide the processing chores into time-sliced operations that are then despatched to waiting processors. The original Models 81 and 82 are rated at 50 and 90 transactions per second, compared to the models 83 and 84, which Honeywell says can process 130 and 170 transactions per second respectively. The new mass storage subsystems are the MSP 3990 Series, aimed at low cost storage of infrequently accessed files – acquired by Honeywell Bull under its new OEM agreement with IBM, and the MSS 8080 which is designed for access of frequently transferred data. The MSP 3990 will be available with two disk options. The smaller disk and controller, which stores 1.8Gb of formatted data and can be expanded to a maximum configuration of 29Gb costs UKP123,450. It is based on the 3880J drive, the reason for the smaller formatted capacity than the 2.4Gb of the IBM version being that the DPS 8000 is a 36-bit machine where the 3090 is 32-bit. With the larger disk of 5.4Gb, based on the 3380K, the maximum configuration is 85Gb and prices start from UKP170,000. The MS 8080 stores 1.5Gb but can be increased to 24Gb in incremental steps and costs UKP60,600. Honeywell Bull, together with CGI Systems Plc, also launched Pacbase, an applications generation tool based on computer-aided software engineering methodology aimed at its GCOS 8 customers. The new products will be available from July.
