Data General Corp’s 88000-based AViiON systems launched back in March, were on show for the first time in Europe this week at the European Unix User Show. UK prices for the machines were also revealed. The AV/300 workstation series range from UKP6,154 for the bottom of the range 17 MIPS system, up to UKP20,292 for the 20 Mips equivalent. The AV/500 multi-user/server systems start at UKP26,510, going up to UKP104,127. Also announced was a $5m, three-year reseller contract with Zetaco Inc, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for AViiON Systems, and under a separate agreement Zetaco is to licensce DG/UX 4.1, Data General’s Unix implementation. The AViiON workstations will be used in future generations of Zetaco’s Sun Microsystems-based NETstor series. Tadpole Technology is also reported to have acquired a licence for DG/UX 4.1 which it will use as the core implementation of its own Unix implementation TP-IX. Tadpole says it will implement TP-IX for its range of 88000 boards, as well as for the Intel 80860. Since its launch back in February at UniForum, DG/UX 4.1 has suffered from a lack of supporting software, and Data General says it is now working hard to address this problem. Under an agreement just completed with Green Hills Software Inc, the Glendale, California-based company’s Fortran, C and Pascal compilers are to become available directly from Data General for AViiON and Dasher systems. At the UK show, Data General’s director of open systems marketing, Janpieter Scheerder, also revealed that the company is to adopt the DEC/Hewlett-Packard Motif user interface as the standard on its DG/UX systems, including the AViiON RISC machines. However Scheerder said that it won’t be the only one, and indicated that a proprietary interface was also under development.
