Digital Equipment Corp watcher Terry Shannon of Gander Resources Inc claims DEC taped out an Alpha Lite LC (for low cost) chip last month and believes it is for the so-called Triumph Alpha personal computer, which he says is scheduled to move next March. However he wouldn’t be surprised if it were announced at DECville in Cannes in September and first shipments came right after the first of the year. He also claims DEC, leery of its margins, has reworked its low-end Alpha price structure to pitch the machines against Hewlett-Packard Co rather than get into a price struggle with Sun Microsystems Inc. He says that we’re looking at a $20,000 Sandpiper and a $25,000 Flamingo at the entry level now. DEC had a prototype Alpha PC at Microsoft Corp’s Developers Conference last month using an EV-4 chip, a part he finds hard to believe will ever be marketed because of its excessive heat dissipation.
