Honeywell Bull Ltd yesterday launched its DPS 6 Plus virtual memory minicomputers in Europe exactly a year since the US launch (CI No 447). Two series are currently available: the 16-slot 410 and the 32-slot 420. Both series can have between one and four tightly coupled processors with the central subsystem comprising two pairs of CPU and virtual memory management unit chips which the company says are custom-designed VLSI. Between 4Mb and 64Mb of physical memory is available with 160 communication lines. There is a maximum disk storage of 6.6Gb with the facility to have up to 16 disk units. The DPS 6 Plus machines will run Honeywell Bull’s proprietary real-time operating system HVS 6 Plus which is a virtual operating system having an auto-configurator, software disk cache and a remote file access facility. The company claims that applications written for the current or last release of the DPS 6 operting system GCOS 6 Mod 400 are compatible with HVS 6 Plus. Honeywell Bull is also offering Office Network Exchange software on the machine which uses the Oracle database and includes ONE Text, ONE Mail, ONE Exchange and ONE Menu. The software bundled as ONE Plus costs around UKP2,000 and will run on the standard DPS 6 range. The company also announced support of LU6.2 for the new machines allowing communications to IBM mainframes as a peer. Support is also provided within the company’s DSA networking product for mixed networks of DPS 6 and DPS 6 Plus minis including network management support via Datanet 8 – the front-end processor to the DPS 7 and 8 mainframes. A remote operations facility, ROF6, was also announced which allows terminals connected to IBM mainframes to manage DPS 6 Plus systems. All machines will be available in Europe in the autumn and are priced from UKP136,000 for a 30-terminal configuration; UKP184,000 for a 45 terminal system; and UKP287,000 for a system supporting 60 terminals. Honeywell Bull adds that an eight slot DPS 6 Plus machine will be announced in the future. The new Plus machines are on beta test at the Forest of Dean and Basildon District Councils and the company claims that hundreds of them have been sold in the US.
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