One of the biggest dangers faced by manufacturers making the switch from proprietary to open systems is that the proprietary base vanishes faster than the open systems can be brought on to plug the gap – but Data General Corp is doing all it can to avoid the danger by trying to keep its Eclipse MV base as happy as possible. The company has come out with another new low-end processor, the Eclipse MV/3500 DC, rated at 3 MIPS and again built around a single chip CMOS CPU designed by the company and fabricated by Hitachi Ltd; it is a slowed-down version of the CPU in the 5 MIPS MV/5500 DC and MV/9500. Set for September ships, the new machine starts at $25,500 with 4Mb memory and 179Mb Winchester. Memory goes to 16Mb at $625 per Mb and disk to 4Gb. The 45 lbs machine is pitched as desktop unit with support for up to 40 users under AOS/VS II, AOS/VS and RDOS operating systems; the less powerful 1.7 MIPS MV/2500 DC costs more at $30,000, but comes with 8Mb as standard, and supports up to 47 users.
