Following the lead set by Tektronix Inc last week (CI No 2,537), Digital Equipment Corp today launches Multia, a combination of Alpha AXP-based hardware, Windows NT and X Window. Multia comes out of DEC’s components and peripherals division, and uses a 166MHz Alpha processor to run Windows NT 3.5 locally. X Window System 11. 6 will ship for it by mid-January. It supports 16- and 32-bit Windows applications, and ASCII/ANSI capabilities are provided, and DEC has provided management software that keeps a copy of all the data and configuration on the server and prevents the user from using the device as a dedicated personal computer. Performance should be in the 250,000 Xstone region. DEC sees the box pretty much as a replacement for its current XVT X-terminal lines. Multia includes thin wire, thick wire and twisted pair Ethernet connections, Peripheral Component Interconnect graphics accelerator, built-in audio, optional floppy, PCMCIA and PCI slots. The Mosaic interface to the Internet World Wide Web is bundled in and IPX/SPX, LAN Manager, NetBIOS, TCP/IP and DECNet we supported. DEC thinks it will appeal to a wider set of resellers than its existing products: in the UK, X-terminal specialist Xanadu Ltd is already bidding the new boxes in some large deals that could see some 45,000 shipped. Pricing, yet to be said, should start at the $3,500 – UKP2,500 mark.
