Digital Equipment Corp’s Personal Computer Business unit has signed a three-year marketing agreement with Fremont, California-based ZNYX Advanced Systems Division to resell the latter’s range of Ethernet adaptors for the Alpha AXP and iAPX-86-based systems. Under the worldwide agreement, DEC will market the EtherAction ZX312, claimed to be the first network interface adaptor for Peripheral Component Interconnect computers; the ZX314, which the company says is the first multichannel adaptor for high-speed Peripheral Component Interconnect local network servers; and the ZX301, which ZNYX boldly claims is the fastest rated network adaptor for EISA-based computers. The products will be marketed under the ZNYX name. According to ZNYX, its Peripheral Component Interconnect-based adaptors can transfer data at rates up to 132Mbps, which it says is four times faster than is possible using an EISA bus. The ZX314, due to start shipping this month, has four independent 10Base-T interfaces in a single Peripheral Component Interconnect bus slot, while the ZX314 incorporates DEC’s 21050 Peripheral Component Interconnect to Peripheral Component Interconnect bridge chip, which is said to expand the host system PCI local bus to accomodate more devices than is otherwise possible. Driver support for Novell Inc NetWare 4.x and 3.x, IBM Corp LAN Server, Microsoft Corp Windows NT, Windows for Workgroups and LAN Manager comes as standard across the range. The products are also claimed to support Unix TCP/IP for Santa Cruz, Univel and SunSoft software applications. No word yet on the pricing.
