It should come as no surprise that Sun’s network computer won’t ship in quantity sometime later in the fall, or about a year after the October 1996 JavaStation’s announcement (CI No 3,118), given that Sun Microsystems Inc won’t be receiving volume deliveries of the microSparc IIep RISC it is using in its fan- less coffee pot JavaStation model until the third quarter from LSI Logic Inc. Although Sun has be making the brick-shaped microSparc II-based JavaStation models for sometime, it’s the IIep – which supports PCI bus, flash RAM, modem and local printing support in the vertical fan-less desktop packaging – that Sun’s desktop group has been waiting for. The JavaOS operating system the devices will run is currently in limbo between JavaSoft – where the work originated – and SunSoft, which is taking over responsibility for its development. Two months after Computergram disclosed the plan to give JavaOS over to SunSoft (CI No 3,142), Sun says it still hasn’t figured out which engineers or what resources will make the leap. JavaSoft product line manager Curtis Sasaki, formerly in charge of JavaOS, is demonstrating Sun’s JavaPC solution this week, a $100 piece of software including the Java virtual machine and HotJava Views interface claimed to turn MS-DOS-based personal computers into Java-based network computers.
Content from our partners
