SunSelect’s SunPC, the $700 software emulator, a replacement for the pre-existing MS-DOS Windows and SunIPC products, is described as a co-development with UK firm Insignia Solutions Ltd, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire – with offices in Mountain View, California – which is partially owned by Microsoft Corp. Though reportedly not the widely-used SoftPC, it is based, Ledbetter said, on SoftPC 3.0. Sun has added things like Open Look and internationalised keyboards. The software gives a Sparc workstation the performance of an Intel Corp 80286 box in protected mode. To increase Sparc’s MS-DOS power, Sun has also fashioned a $1,500 SunPC Accelerator SX, an Sbus board with a 16MHz 80486SX chip and custom ASICs to achieve 80386 or better performance with SuperVGA graphics. There is a $2,000 SunPC Accelerator DX equipped with a 25MHz 80486 part to put Sparcsystems on a par with 80486 personal computers. The products become available at the end of this week with upgrades priced at $250. PC-NFS 4.0, on the other hand, has been quietly shipping since March 19, but SunSelect, a beta site for Windows 3.1, couldn’t announce it until Microsoft officially unveiled 3.1 at Comdex. The new version includes built-in console messaging, 4/16Mbps Token Ring drivers, simultaneous access to NetWare and Banyan Systems Inc Vines and easier administration. SunSelect says the new release of the PC-NFS Programmers’ Toolkit is the first to enable developers to write TCP/IP network-based distributed Windows applications. The enhanced product is also first to join industry standard application programming interfaces (XTI and TIRC) with TCP/IP under MS-DOS and Windows. SunSelect is pricing PC-NFS 4.0 at $4,415 for one user, $90 for an upgrade, but under a special 90-day promotion a version for five users will run to $25 a seat, 25 users at $20 a seat and a site licence at roughly $13 a seat. Ledbetter, who was attracted to the subsidiary out of patriotic, America-first aspirations, believes the unit will be worth $100m in two years.
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