Computer Associates and Hewlett-Packard ally to launch systems management tools
Sending out boxing gloves with the invitations and promising the attendance of Smokin’ Joe Frazier on the booth this Thursday, software giant Computer Associates International Inc is planning to roll out its first Unix products in the area of systems management, information management and business applications software, in a joint announcement with Hewlett-Packard Co. The fruits of the collaboration that was first revealed last January are expected to be software covering areas such as production control, storage management, security, control and audit, data centre administration and performance management and accounting. Computer Associates, a magpie collector of IBM Corp mainframe software companies, has more recently brought personal computers running Windows into its domain, and is now gunning for heterogeneous, multi-vendor sites.
Visual Technology brings the price of its latest X-Terminal down to the $1,000 mark
Visual Technology Inc, Westborough, Massachusetts has a new addition to its family of eight X-terminals, and plans to show it off at Unix Expo at the Jacob Javits Center in New York this week. The TX100M, priced at $1,000, features a non-interlaced display, high-resolution and support for local clients such as terminal emulators and window managers. Coming standard with a 14 grayscale monitor with dual-screen resolutions of 1,024 by 768 at 62Hz and 864 by 648 at 72Hz, the TX100M uses a 16.6MHz 658020 with 2Mb memory expandable to 10Mb, has a Motif-like XDS window manager, virtual screen panning and the option of 1Mb or 2Mb of flash read-only memory, enabling multiple, customised fonts to be stored within the X-terminal itself. Other features include an optimised X scheduler, an on-line help function and an X-optimised implementation of TCP/IP. Visual Technology is taking analyst Stephen Auditor of the X Business Group at his word: he predicted that up to 500,000 ASCII terminals would be replaced by X-terminals over the next two years once technology providers could deliver a reliable, under-$1,000 product. Visual claims that it has just that, and it offers two-year warranty and 24-hour replacement guarantee to back it up.
Specialix adds new input-output controllers, MS-DOS-to-Unix software
Campbell, California-based Specialix International Inc, which now claims to be the world’s third largest manufacturer of personal computers-to-Unix input-output add-ons – vying for position with the likes of Digiboard Inc, Computone Systems Inc and Equinox Inc – is using Unix Expo to introduce two new products, including its first software release. XIO is a new mid-range line of input-output controllers using a host card based on a 25MHz Zilog Z280 chip (the existing SI line uses the 20MHz chip), in conjunction with new modular terminal adaptors each containing two Cirrus Logic Inc CD1400 Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitters. When plugged into an 80386 or 80486 personal computer, Specialix claims that system speeds of 38.4Kbps are achieved with all ports running simultaneously. Individual devices can run at up to 115.2Kbps, says the company. A 128-port limit with four host cards is cited, though the average number is likely to be between 30 and 40 users. The terminal adaptors will connect to RS-232 serial, RS-422 serial or parallel ports. Available from November, XIO host cards, for AT, Micro Channel and EISA systems, cost from $2,000 for an eight-port AT system. For top-end systems, Specialix fields its Transputer-based RIO multi-port input-output system for 40-plus users. The new software release is Aterm, a bi-directional MS-DOS-to-Unix terminal emulator that allows for hot-keying between the two environments. The software is resident on both the Unix host (Intel-based running Santa Cruz Operation Inc or Interactive Systems Corp Unix) and an MS-DOS machine via serial connection. It supports ANSI colour terminals, graphics, multiple screen display and a menu-driven user interface. Screen and key maps can be loaded individua
lly to support multiple and function key combinations used in applications such as Wordperfect and Lotus Development’s 1-2-3.
Software through Pictures now available for Santa Cruz Unix on Intel kit
Interactive Development Environments Inc of San Francisco, has developed a version of its Software through Pictures software engineering products for Santa Cruz Operation Inc’s Open Desktop environment for iAPX-86 machines, in a move that it hopes will position it to win substantial business from Advanced Computing Environment customers. The product is already available on MIPS Computer Systems Inc RISC-based hardware, including workstations from ACE member Digital Equipment Corp. Software development is one of the strategic market areas that the ACE Consortium is targeting. Demonstrated at Unix Expo for the first time, Software through Pictures Release 4.2 will come out in the first quarter next year, priced from $5,000 to $21,000.
Systems Center print spooler optimises printer resources
The Unitech division of Systems Center Inc, Reston, Virginia, will launch a new print spooler in New York this week. Print.Unet is described as a network print spooler for heterogeneous Unix environments, designed to simplify print queue management and optimise shared printer resources. Using Motif as its graphical user interface, the monitor enables users to submit or modify print jobs, check status, view and prioritise jobs in the queue. Users on one host can send a job to a remote host for execution, with job submission, queuing and printing all able to take place on different systems. Access control lists specifically who should have access to the queue. Available in December for most Unix machines, the product supports most printers, but needs a Berkeley socket interface to TCP/IP. Pricing from $5,000 for a ten-node network. The firm also has a new release of its Backup.Unet product, version 2.0, which also includes OSF/Motif and adds support for optical Jukeboxes.
Oracle and Santa Cruz look to be ready to kiss and make up at the show
The relationship between Oracle Corp and Santa Cruz Operation Inc, strained since Santa Cruz chose Ingres Corp’s Ingres as the bundled database for Open Desktop a few years back, looks set to get back onto a better footing this week at Unix Expo: the joint technology and marketing announcement will, among other things, end the charge that Santa Cruz had been demanding before it would integrate its products with the Oracle relational database.
