Like the tick-birds that are tolerated by the rhinoceros because among all their irritations they perform one useful service, Microsoft Corp continues to tweak IBM’s tail, its latest effort being a series of off-erings called Mach 20 that minimise even further the need for anyone to buy one of IBM’s Personal System/2s. The Mach 20 performance enhancement system for 8088- based IBM Personals and Personalikes consists of an 80286 board with interfaces for a memory expansion option, a multi-media disk drive control option, and for graphic input devices, greatly prolonging the useful life of the machines. Microsoft is even developing a custom version of MS OS/2 for the Mach 20 system, which will be available to users who buy the expanded memory option, so that they will be able to run Windows 2.0 and OS/2 Presentation Manager. The Mach 20 also solves the no free slots problem because the board has a connector for the Mach 20 Disk Plus disk controller option that uses the stand-ard disk controller slot. The main board replaces the 8088 with an 8MHz 80286 and a 16-bit bus connects the 80286 bus to the system board and input-output channel resources. 16Kb of on-board cache provides the processor with fast access to frequently used information. The board is $495. The Memory Plus option supports up to 3.5Mb expanded memory to run OS/2 and OS/2 applications. Memory Plus comes with 512Kb for $395. The Mach 20 Disk Plus disk controller supports both 1.2Mb and 360Kb 5.25 internal drives, as well as 1.44Mb and 720Kb 3.5 internal drives. It sells for $99. All three are available in the US on on September 21.
