An 80386 DRS model running multi-tasking MS-DOS 4.0 was the surprise inclusion in ICL lavish Clan Unix launch in Chantilly, north of Paris, yesterday. The 80386 machine is the latest model in the DRS line of professional workstations and I hope IBM will be very irritated at us for announcing just four days after its OS/2 launch said managing director Peter Bonfield. The DRS Professional workstation comes with 4Mb extended memory and is being previewed at Sicob Printemps running standard applications with communications multi-tasking in background mode. The company is getting MS-DOS 4.0 under an agreement with Microsoft and it will ship from July. The company will follow up with MS-Windows and multi-tasking MS-DOS 4.1, with 16Mb of addressable memory, on current 80286 architectures, in September. The company’s Concurrent DOS machine, the DRS 300, is now also available as the DRS NX under Unix System V. ICL also launched new models in its departmental Unix System V Clan range from Datamedia Corp and Computer Consoles Inc: they are the Clan 4, 5, 6 and 7. Various tools, including applications generator and databases, will be made available on the Clan range including Ingres from Relational Technology Inc. The new Clans will support the Oslan Ethernetwork by the third quarter of 1987 using boards from Communications Management Corp and SNA communications from Communications Solutions Corp, 3270 and LU 6.2 ar available now. The Clan range currently supports TCP/IP and conventional Ethernet. The Clan 4 is a 68020-based machine from Datamedia which can support up to 32 users; it has maximum memory of 14Mb and can support 448Mb of disk and a 60Mb cartridge tape drive. The other models are all from Computer Consoles, and the Clan 5 will support 48 users and has a maximum memory of 8Mb and a maximum disk storage of 1.1Gb. The 64-user Clan 6 takes up to 32Mb memory and 6Gb disk and the Clan 7 has the same memory and peripheral complement as the 6 but will support 128 users. No detailed prices were given but ICL says the cheap est Clan will cost around UKP20,000 and the most expensive UKP250,000.
