IBM looks to have a busy Micro Channel week ahead of it, with Tuesday expected to see the launch of the long-delayed PS/2 Models 90 and 95, and Wednesday following up with launch of a faster RS/6000 processor to create new workstations and servers said to deliver 55 MIPS against 44 MIPS for the current ones. The Model 90 will introduce a new Extended Graphics Array to follow on from VGA. According to Microbytes Daily, the new PS/2 Model 90 will be built around the 25MHz 80486, and like the PS/2 70 A21, will use the Power Platform, with the processor and all speed and performance components on a separate daughtercard. They will have four full 32-bit Micro Channel slots capable of hitting the design limit of 160Mbytes-per-second bandwidth with appropriate boards and will come with 8Mb standard and take up to 32Mb. The 16-bit XGA display adaptor is integrated on the motherboard, will offer resolution of 1,024 by 768, 256 colours, and be upwards compatible with VGA and 8514/A. The 90 has four drive bays, one with a 3.5 1.44Mb floppy installed – the 2.88Mb floppies aren’t now expected until next year. Hard disk options will include 160Mb or 320Mb drives interfaced with the 32-bit bus master SCSI card announced last year, which will have 512Kb of cache RAM. The Model 95 is the long-awaited high-end server for LAN Server and multi-user applications, and will come with 33MHz or 25MHz 80486. Only a uni-processor, it will have eight 32-bit slots, seven drive bays, and 8Mb RAM and the same disk controller, but will not have XGA on the motherboard. There is also a top-end 80486-based portable, the P90, in the works, said to have a large SCSI disk drive, perhaps as much as 400Mb, which will be externally similar to the P70, with fold-up gas plasma screen and removable keyboard, which may appear on Tuesday, too, although that seems unlikely. IBM is also working on a version with the colour liquid crystal diode display it’s developing with Toshiba. Prices are still uncertain, but Japanese variants of the desktop and server machines are already launched by IBM Japan as the PS/55 Model 5580-Y, with the 33MHz 80486 and 160Mb or 320Mb disk, expandable to 1.6Gb. IBM rates it at two to 3.4 times the performance of the previous top end, the 5570-V. The 25MHz model, the 5560-W, comes with 80Mb disk option as well as the larger two, and up to 960Mb. The PS/55s have 4Mb, an 8Kb cache and cost from $22,000 for the server, $17,000 for the workstation. As for the top-end RS/6000s, these are expected at the opening of Unix Expo in New York, and are expected to use a faster version of the chip set – the fastest current version of the set is clocked at 25MHz.
