Dear oh dear, not-invented-here and sibling rivalry syndromes seem to be bedevilling DEC UK: the company yesterday announced the high availability Mira master-standby dual processor configuration of the MicroVAX II launched in France last month (CI No 686) – but completely failed to mention that the product was the first to come out of the European Centre for Special Systems at Annecy in France; the Mira system ties two MicroVAXen together via Ethernet and adds hardware and software features to detect system failure and switch asynchronous and synchronous lines to the other CPU – which can be used for non-critical applications until it is told to drop everything and grab the reins; configured with two 5Mb CPUs, two 71Mb disk drives, two 90Mb streamers and Ethernet, the Mira system starts at UKP55,600 and is available in the UK next month.