A whole string of additional announcements were made by IBM after close of play on Tuesday, headlined by two new models of the 3092 Processor Controller for the top-end 3090 mainframes, in which the microcode is locaked away so that it is well-nigh impossible for third parties to get at it to reconfigure it. The new models are the 004 and 005, and feature an internal disk drive so that users can finally get rid of their external 3370 disk drives. The 004 is the single processor model and is functionally equivalent to the 003 – it is available only for the bottom end 3090-100S and -120S models, the 005 is the more resilient duplex version with two disk drives, equivalent to the 001 and 002. All currently-installed 3090s will continue using the existing models and retain and upgrade them when they upgrade within the family. The 3092 004 has a single processor, integrated disk drive and one integrated optical disk drive for maintenance data interchange – in other words the removable disk is used for microcode distribution, making it much more secure to IBM than the present use of tape drives. They also use ordinary 50Hz or 60Hz mains power rather than the 400Hz of their predecessors. The IBM 3092 Model 005 has dual processors and integrated disks for back-up of critical functions, except when operating a multiprocessor system in a physically partitioned configuration, and contains two integrated optical disk drives for maintenance data interchange. It can also do concurrent maintenance of the IBM 3092 itself should one side go down, except on physically partitioned multiprocessors. Both need either two 3206 or two 3180 145 display station console screens, and a 3864 Model 2 modem with Auto-Call Unit on a dedicated line. The low-end 004 model is available now for the 120S and 100S, and in the third quarter for the 100E, at $155,400; the 005 is available now for all but the 150E, for which it arrives in the third quarter and costs $278,000; the predecessor cost $235,000 but you don’t need the 3370 disk drives on the new one.
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