Sony Corp has signed to take a 20% equity stake in Calabasas, California-based Information Presentation Technologies Inc, the company that produces the uShare range of networking products connecting Apple Macintoshes with Unix and MS-DOS systems. Sony said it had also signed independent software vendor and value added reseller agreements with Information Presentation so that the latter can offer a turnkey system, the Worknetting Server, based on Sony hardware and its own networking software. The pact gives Sony an entry into the file server market, currently a highly profitable and fast-growing industry segment. The Worknetting Server uses a dual 68030 News system as a hardware base, where the second 68030 acts as a dedicated input-output processor. With a 286Mb hard disk drive, 4Mb RAM, 125Mb tape drive and the uShare software, the thing comes in at $12,000.
