Expected on Monday from the systems division of Intel Corp up in Hillsboro, Oregon is a 4Mb 80386-based AT-compatible single board computer with all the trimmings packed onto a single Multibus II board. The iSBC-386/PC16 is said to include a full set of AT support chips, 64Kb cache, the BIOS from Award, VGA graphics, a floppy disk controller, 80387 maths chip – which can be swapped for a Weitek if preferred, two serial, a parallel and an AT port. The initial version of the board – expected to be out in the second quarter of next year – uses the 16MHz version of the chip and it is said that up to eight boards can be run in parallel, and Intel demonstrates its favourite trick of pulling out one of the boards to show how the thing keeps running with scarcely a blip. Insiders who’ve seen the board say the company is using robotic assembly and has an ingenious soldering technique to get over the fact that wave soldering is too coarse for the surface mount technology: a robot arm sprays the solder with air hot enough to melt it. Customi sable with up to 512Kb EPROM, the board, aimed primarily at industrial applications, will be $5,000 in unit quantities. Prime Computer uses In tel iSBC boards in its EXL stations.
