As well as announcing delivery dates for the OS/2 operating system (see back page), and shipment of the one millionth Personal System/2 – most of them have gone to dealers, and may not yet be sold on to end users – IBM made a whole string of disconnected announcements in the US yester-day, many but by no means all of them in the manufacturing and financial systems arenas. On the financial front there are a whole string of new products in the 4700 financial systems line, including a new version of the 4702 processor that more closely integrates Personal Computers as workstations as well as better supporting the Token Ring network. There are new versions of the PS/2 30 and 50 specifically aimed at banks by virtue of a 50-key function pad. The 4707 is a 9 monochrome display for PS/2s where space is tight – it costs $275. A new automatic teller machine, the 4732, comes in through-the-wall and lobby versions at $19,900 for either, ships in third quarter 1988. Other new peripherals include coin dispenser, document printer, transaction printer and mag stripe and PIN readers. On the manufacturing front, there’s a new $10,000 7552 Industrial Computer based on the 10MHz 80286 that supports the OS/2 operating system and includes 20Mb disk. New adaptors for the broadband PC Network create extra RF channels for PS/2. Two new pro-grams that run under VM, MAP LAN Channel Station Support and MAP VM Support link Manufacturing Automa tion Protocol terminals to 370-type hosts. Among the announcements in other fields, those saddled with 5100, 5110 or 5120 desk-top comput ers or the System 23 Datamaster can trade them in for the new 5363 mod-el of System 36 for a 15% discount on the hardware – until April 29 1988. Third and fourth strings of 933X disk drives are now supported on System 38 models 400, 600 and 700. CICS/MVS and IMS/VS communic ations subsystem are now integral to Systems Applications Architect ure, there is an XA version of TPF Transaction Processing Facility. Displaywrite/370 release 2 can im port image and graphics from anoth er document or from GDDM libraries. And the Series 3 copier is defunct.
