IBM Corp will be two-timing Intel Corp in a big way when a new initiative revealed in Computer Reseller News gets under way. The US trade weekly hears that the company is preparing a blitz on the OEM personal computer market from its plant in Austin, Texas and plans to sell both board-level and finished systems using iAPX-86-compatible microprocessors made by Intel itself, by IBM under its agreement with Intel, but also the ones made by Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Cyrix Corp. The paper says that IBM showed off a system using the Cyrix Cx486 to potential customers in a New York hotel room during PC Expo, and that it is close to an agreement with Advanced Micro. First customer is seen to be Reply Corp, San Jose – taking Intel 80386- and 80486-based systems and ones using IBM’s 386SLC. Although IBM’s agreement with Intel forbids it to sell the chips to third parties, IBM insists that it is not precluded from selling them to other manufacturers in board or system-level products. The Austin-based operation is called Personal Systems OEM, and is clearly in part an initiative to up the factory loading at Austin, where a visit last November made it evident that the factory has very substantial spare capacity despite making RS/6000s as well as boards for PS/2s and PS/1s. The company told the paper that the target was 30% of output at Austin going to OEM customers in two years.
