Having abandoned Sparcsystem-compatibles as unsalable, EOS Technologies Inc, Santa Clara, has just started shipping the first full production fabrication of its new third-generation EOStation 1030L, a performance clone of Sun Microsystems Inc’s Sparcstation 10 Model 30. It is the first member of the company’s L-Series SuperSparc line using LSI Logic Corp’s ASIC chip set and Texas Instruments Inc’s 36MHz chip on an EOS-designed circuit board layout. It comes in five configurations: System Upgrade Kit, Base System, Server Ready System, Supermini Desktop Server and Standard System Package. The L-Series motherboard fits into the Sparcstation 1, 1+ and 2 formats so EOS can provide a plug-in upgrade path from older Suns. The Standard EOStation 1030L comes with 32Mb ECC memory, 424Mb high density drive, 1.44Mb floppy, 19 colour monitor, GX graphics, Sparc 2-style chassis and shrinkwrapped Solaris 2.1.
Transportable
The Base System loses the disk, monitor, GX board and ECC memory. The Server Ready comes with the Base features plus 32Mb ECC memory and 424Mb disk. The Supermini Desktop Server replaces the 424Mb disk with a 1Gb disk. EOS is also getting its first 40MHz 1Mb Supercache SuperSparc CPUs ready to ship this month. The EOS 1041L models will be the same configurations as the 1030L. EOS is still tusseling with the fact that shrinking the board’s size cuts the number of memory banks it fits from eight to six. Also while L-Series boards were designed to provide two Mbus and four SBus connections, when using the SS2 chassis, the height restriction doesn’t allow for the second bank of Mbus and SBus slots. EOS is currently designing a new chassis to provide full mechanical functionality, looking to ship it in June. Also in the works and due in June are LS-Series EOS SuperSparc+ workstations. These models (1030LS, 1040LS, 1041LS, 1052LS) are to be exact duplicates of Sun’s Sparcstation 10 line in performance and mechanical functionality. The L-Series systems are to list at 20% less than Sun on all models. EOS is selling largely direct in the US; via resellers in Europe, Canada, Asia and Australia. It has a preliminary EOS Europe office and EOS Korea has been in full operation for six months. It also has a Sparcstation 2 clone, the EOStation 10L, not a focus product. Pet research and development project is a slickly designed prototype transportable, 1,280 by 1,024 16 diagonal gas plasma monochrome flat panel display SuperSparc box weighing under 20 lbs with desktop footprint of about 9 by 6 and depth of 3.5 minimium to 5 maximum. It won’t go into production until EOS can design a colour version too.
