Mountain View, California-based Dynatech Computer Systems Inc still much better known as Cromemco – has followed up its agreement to take a licence for Stockholm-based Diab Data AB’s D-NIX real-time Unix (CI No 1,280) by introducing the first fruits of the agreement, the DCS-1 series for real-time, distributed database, heterogeneous networking, and transaction processing. The VMEbus machines come with up to four 68030 processors and support up to 256 users. Compliant with the System V Interface Definition and Posix, D-NIX offers millisecond response for real-time applications with task prioritisation, pre-emptive scheduler, process memory locking and fast interrupt latency; transaction processing support with mirror disks for data integrity, confirmed disk writes and contiguous file space allocation; simple distributed databases (whatever that means) with D-NIX handlers; gateways for IBM and Unisys hosts and Macintosh and MS-DOS micros, and support for Network File System, X25, TCP/IP and Ethernet. The family consists of a Pedestal model with up to two 64Kb cache 68030 processors, two 68882s and support for up to 42 users; the rack takes the full complement of four of everything. Processors can be added transparently to the user – the system simply runs faster. Pedestals are from $26,820 with one 4Mb processor and floating point unit, D-NIX, 150Mb disk, four 6U VME slots; three SCSI channels at 1.5M bytes-per-second each; and four RS232 ports. Pricing on the Rack begins at $49,600 with two of each of the processor complexes above, a 300Mb disk, and the same complement of ports as the Pedestal. Dynatech is owned by $400m-a-year Dynatech Corp of Burlington, Massachusetts.
