As expected (CI No 2,140), Digital Equipment Corp yesterday unveiled its 150MHz Alpha personal computer, the DECpc AXP/150, designed to run Microsoft Corp Windows NT, plus two Pentium ready Intel Corp 80486-based machines, models DECpc DT and DECpc MTE. In an attempt to streamline its personal computer range, DEC plans to market the new Alpha and Pentium systems in parallel, with both offered at similar price points and configurations. The rest of DEC’s Intel iAPX-86 lines will marketed separately. The DECpc AXP/150 is priced at UKP5,350, which sounds expensive compared with DEC’s two new Pentium ready models, DECpc DT and DECpc MTE, priced at UKP1,395 and UKP2,095 respectively, especially as almost all the software for it has to run in emulation mode using Insignia Solutions Ltd’s SoftPC, which provides support for MS-DOS and 16-bit Windows applications. The DECpc AXP/150 is a minitower configuration and comes with from 16Mb to 128Mb RAM, 245Mb disk, 512Kb cache, six EISA slots and 14 colour SuperVGA monitor. Other features include two serial ports, Ethernet adapter, five drive bays and a SCSI controller. DEC says 250 developer DECpc AXP/150 systems are already with independent software vendors and hopes to increase the number to 1,000 by June 30. The company expects 300 Alpha applications to be available by September, with more rolling out over the course of the year. The DECpc AXP/150 and DECpc 560 ST personal computers will also support Intel Corp’s Pentium Peripheral Connect Interface bus specification, which enables NT applications running in either environment to interoperate.
