Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based Digiboard Inc says that it will supply serial software links to Novell Inc’s NetWare 3.11 network operating system, for local outer networks – the company calls these LONs, but it should be getting a still letter from Echelon Corp, which has been calling its Local Operating Networks LONs for ages now. The software, designed for the extended office sector where things like notebook computers, laptops and modem systems reside on outer networks, operates as a remote node on the network. It offloads transactions from the server down to systems on the outer networks. To do this, Digiboard has written a NetWare Loadable Module compatible with Novell’s NetWare Access Server and Application Server applications programming interface. The software enables users to access local and remote communication services on NetWare networks without being confined to a local area network. Meanwhile, Apple Computer Inc says it will fit out its Quadra 700/900 AUX 3.0 servers with DigiBoard multi-port boards, while a new worldwide OEM deal will see IBM supply DigiBoard 128-port asynchronous cluster controllers for its RS/6000 series. These will enable the RS/6000 to support more users. The DigiChannel c/x board is now being fitted to all RS/6000s and offers communications support for between 16 and 896 users. The OEM deal between IBM and Digiboard is the first of its kind and IBM rarely acknowledges when a component is made by another named company. DigiBoard has recently opened a European office in Cologne. It claims 40% of the world market for hardware communications products that enable MS-DOS and Unix systems to share communications and improve their ability to interact as multi-user systems. In addition to the OEM deal with IBM, Digiboard also supplies hardware to AT&T Co and its NCR Corp unit, Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG, NEC Corp and Apple Computer Inc. It has recently announced a software co-operation agreement with systems software supplier Citrix Systems Inc, the Coral Springs, Florida company that’s obsessed with the idea of making operating systems like OS/2 multiuser. RS/6000 customers using the Digiboard hardware, which can also be bought as an external unit, can now install up to six DigiChannel host adaptors, each connecting to 128 users via cluster boxes, giving the potential total of 896. This compares with a previous maximum of 224 users. The cluster boxes have builtin diagnostic features for system checks and administration. During use, a system manager can monitor such information as user take-up and the load on the processor. The host adaptor offers improved signal throughput, offering a benchmark of 38.4Kbps with 896 users connected. Intel Corp’s highlyinte-grated 80186 processors are installed in both host and cluster boxes so that the drain on the RS/6000’s main processor is kept to a minimum. This makes available increased power for applications, and offers users the potential to specify smaller, lower cost processors even though many users are being supported.
