Mission Electronics Ltd of Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, and its US/Canadian Mission Cyrus arm based in Vancouver, has become the second firm to announce plans to move in on the Sun Microsystems’ Sparc-based Sun-4 market, Solbourne Computer Corp being the first. In addition to the portable Micro Channel machine it launched at Comdex/Spring (CI No 1,157), the company revealed plans for a series of Sparc-based Micro Channel machines that will use a version of the SunOS operating system licensed from Phoenix Technologies Inc, Norwood, Massachusetts. Due for introduction later this year they will run a full library of personal computer applications, via the Phoenix MS-DOS software co-processor. Phoenix says it is supplying at least half a dozen other firms working on Sparc+Micro Channel systems, providing its Advanced ROM BIOS and design help with the hardware. Initial Mission systems are likely to use the Sparc as a co-processor. Sparc vendors are looking at establishing the Micro Channel as the bus of choice, it says. VMEbus is costly and takes up a lot of room, while the Micro Channel has more add in cards.
