Control Data Corp’s new president and chief operating officer Lawrence Perlman, elevated to the number two spot at the troubled Minneapolis company after he worked miracles at the disk drive arm of the company, says he has not ruled out any options for cutting the company’s losses, and options do include the sale of part or all of the computer business. But that is not the only option for the Cyber scientific-oriented mainframes and ETA supercomputers – Perlman says that he is also looking at seeking equity partners to help turn around the computer businesses, which had operating losses of about $130m last year. The gossip around the Twin Cities for weeks has been that the computer operations were on their way to Unisys Corp, but Perlman insists that It’s too early to tell if we have to sell portions of the computer business. He dismisses those reports that Unisys representatives have visited the St Paul assembly plant of the ETA supercomputer subsidiary (CI No 1,113) by saying We have Unisys and every other manufacturer visiting ETA: We’re trying to sell them on ETA as a compatible supercomputer with their mainframes. He says he’d prefer to keep the computer business more or less intact, but acknowledges that there’s no question that one of the ways to help make computers profitable is to find the right kind of partner; we don’t have to own all of ETA or Cyber.