AFE Computers Ltd, Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, which announced Sparc intentions at the end of last year (CI No 1,586), is about to make its move. In the US, it has just hired John Shepard as president of Charlottesville, Virginia-based AFE Computers Inc. Shepard previously managed Du Pont Pixel Inc’s BenchMark-originated Mac Blitz and bRISC sales force. Shepard expects to sell AFE’s 25MHz IPC clone through an independent representative organisation to dealers, resellers and system integrators already handling AutoCad, RasterOps and Sony News. These will target the scientific and engineering end-user community, where they will occasionally trip over Sun. Shepard said that AFE in the UK, which will supply components for US assembly to another of its subsidiaries, AFE Technologies, got its first working 25MHz chip set from LSI Logic Corp last month, and expects to get enough of them to meet its US sales target of 125 by the end of the year. AFE’s boxes, still unchristened but deliverable this month, will have 12Mb memory on board and bundle a 21 screen together with Interactive Systems-supplied SunOS, SunView, Open Look, X Window and Visix Looking Glass for $10,000. AFE’s screen and RAM size exceed Sun’s 19 and 8Mb for $2,000 less. And AFE will be unbundling its colour frame buffer and selling that together with a 21 monitor for a cost-effective $3,000. Also in the pipeline is a SparcStation 2 clone.
