Fujitsu bows to the pressure for standards, puts Multimedia Windows on FM Towns
Fujitsu Ltd is repositioning its multi-media personal computer, FM Towns – a version of which ICL Plc is considering adding to its product line, in a major switch to use of standard software, instead of the innovative but proprietary and unpopular environment available until now. Microsoft Corp’s Windows with Multi-media Extensions V1.0 for the FM-Towns will be available from March 20, and another 20 to 30 applications by the end of the year. At the same time, Fujitsu announced a new model of the FM-Towns, the UX series of Towns II, with a 40Mb hard disk, which goes for just under $3,000.
Personal computer+pager system enables human-free manufacturing environment
Fujitsu Ltd subsidiary Fujitsu Customer Engineering has launched a new system that links a personal computer and a pager to provide an adjunct to complete unattended operation of a manufacturing system. Until now most Japanese companies have relied on at least one worker to monitor a factory automation system. A hard-hat version of the Fujitsu FMR series personal computer monitors systems errors, power alarms and operator call signals and generates calls to a predefined pager. Fujitsu expects demand from the system to come mainly from medium to small firms hurt by labour shortages – though the Japanese officially discourage immigration and make it clear to Gaijin that they are regarded as inferior, in practice, you will not find the owner of a small manufacturing business on the outskirts of the cities who cannot find employees otherwise complaining or being racist in front of his Iranian or Filipino workers. More often that owner can be seen at the immigration office pleading with the officials to allow one of his workers stay longer – this is really a total change from 10 years ago. Fujitsu hopes to sell more than 100 of the unattended systems over the next three years.
ICL server is launched as FMR-Server
Fujitsu has introduced to the Japanese market the FMR-Server series of servers from ICL Plc to which Fujitsu has added its own technology, presumed to be the Japanese language OS/2 LAN Manager. The machines released in Japan are a series of four models of two types, all based on AT architecture, with 33MHz or 20MHz 80486 CPU, 32-bit EISA bus, and duplex disks, uninterriptible power supply in the model FMR-340SV and via an expansion kit for the FMR-540SV. The models released in Japan are the FMR-340SV Model 20 with 8Mb and 170Mb disk (priced at around $12,300) through the Model 30 – 8Mb, with 310Mb to 495Mb disk standard through to the FMR-540SV Model 30, with minimum 16Mb memory and 495Mb disk, to 64Mb memory and 3Gb disk, at from $26,000.
New optical filing system has functions to enable users to customise it
Fujitsu Ltd has come out with an optical disk filing system, the EFS80 series, which incorporates a user-customising function in an attempt to make its systems easier to use. Menus are user-customisable; documents can be filed on floppy disk as well as in a format compatible with Fujitsu’s Oasys Japanese word-processing systems. Another option is the 5.25 erasable optical disk library device – not cheap at $47,800 – with capacity to store 1m A4 pages. File reading capacity has been improved with capacity to continuously read in 1,000 documents. Fujitsu and other vendors, like Hitachi Ltd and Toshiba Corp, are pitching optical filing systems at applications such as patent data storage.
Fujitsu joins the Unix laptop spree with new models of its 68030 G-series
Fujitsu Ltd has equipped its proprietary line of 68030-based G-series workstations with a thin film transistor liquid crystal diode colour screen, launching the new laptop model as the FM G-150IILX Model 10/30. The screen can display 16 colours from a palette of 512, and supports MS-DOS packaged software as well as running Unix System V.4 and Unix-based packages such as Unify (Japanese version) and Empress relational databases. For the first time, the company says, remote database access and remote installa
tion are possible, enabling the installation of workstation software via links with M-series mainframes. The G-series workstations, which have been shipping since 1987, have sold a total 89,000 units, according to Fujitsu; the new laptop models are priced from about $8,600.
F38681 Handy Card comes with a large touch-sensitive display
Fujitsu has a handy terminal with a large LCD display, called the F38681 Handy Card. The unit is an A4 size, weighs 2 lbs 14 oz and is 1.2 thick. The screen is 80 characters by 25 lines and is a touch panel, with a three row array numeric keypad. The product has been shipping since the end of February and is intended for the warehousing and inventory-management market, or for sales people in manufacturing industry. The terminal costs $2,150.
FMR-Card notebook gets an array of new peripherals including 40Mb disk
Fujitsu has launched new peripherals for its notebook computer, the FMR-Card, which weighs just over 2 lbs. The expansion station, available in two models, is a desktop station which can be configured with either a card, costing $680, and a 3.5Mb disk; or with 40Mb hard disk at $1,000. A DS-Link adaptor is provided for local network connection, and a 2,400bps modem is also provided; a bar-code reader for the RS-232 interface comes too.
Fujitsu and partners land $46m contract with Telekom Malaysia
Fujitsu, in a consortium with Iwakura Cable and the Tomen trading company, has won an order in an international tender for the supply of around 1,600 optical transmission systems and 520 centralised monitoring systems to Telekom Malaysia Berhad: the total contract value is around $45.8m; the company had already had a five-year contract to supply 800 optical transmission systems to Telekom Malaysia over the years 1985 to 1990, and the latest deal extends its supply agreement as practically the exclusive supplier for another three years; Fujitsu’s 20%-owned local affiliate, Business Systems (Malaysia), is to co-ordinate the installations.
