With its efforts to become a Sparcstation clonemaker stymied earlier this year by the withdrawal of Phoenix Technologies from the Unix BIOS business, US start-up Mission Cyrus must now decide whether to get a SunOS licence direct from Sun (a la Solbourne) or to go to Interactive Systems Corp in the hope of greater added-value for its projected range of Sparc systems, which were originally expected to appear by the end of this year. Despite the setbacks, Mission is still keen to become a Sparcette, and hopes to have a decision early next year: both firms have approached it for the business. In the meantime, Mission is running Interactive’s 386/IX on its innovative new 80386 Micro Channel portable, the Darius ProPortable, which supports a 200Mb hard drive and a 120Mb tape back-up. The 20 lb ProPortable features a built-in ink jet printer and gas plasma VGA screen. Unix is also available on Mission’s 80386 Darius file server (oddly subtitled CentralNtelligence), and will be on its 25MHz 80486 version once it becomes available next year, sporting fault tolerance and a basic 8Mb memory, plus a 256Kb cache. For the graphical user interface, Mission has chosen OSF Motif and Looking Glass from Visix. Mission Cyrus, whose UK-based parent company Mission Electronics has made a name for itself in top-of-the-range stereo systems, and whose sister firm Mission Technologies Plc has been building and supplying personal computers in Europe for the last few years, intends to distribute its machines in the States solely through dealers, targeting 10% to 15% of IBM’s top resellers as potential recruits. But unusually in such circumstances, Mission will offer to support the end-user directly. The company is building a 30,000 square foot facility in Mountain View, California, and has enticed Computerland’s vice-chairman Ed Faber onto its board of directors.
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