DEC’s major announcement today is expected to include four workstations and three personal computers, with the MIPS Computer Systems Corp-based Ultrix station appearing as the DECstation 3100. The machine, with R2000 CPU and R2010 is expected to be rated at about 12 VAX MIPS and to come with up to 24Mb main memory, up to 1Gb disk, Ethernet interface, and resolution of 1,024 by 864 – for a base price of under $16,000. The Personal VAX is expected to appear as the VAXstation 3100, coming with 32Kb cache, 8Mb to 32Mb main memory, 1.4MB 3.5 floppy, and 52Mb, 105Mb and 332Mb disk options, 95Mb tape streamer, and support for MS-DOS applications under VMS and DECwindows using a new VAXpc program. Performance is put at between 2.4 and 4.2 times that of the VAXstation 2000 at under $10,000. Most unexpected part of the announcement is that DEC is now expected to include two multi-processor VAXstations – the 3520 with two CVAX processors and the 3540 with four. Rated at 5.5 and 11 VAX MIPS, they are each expected to come with 64Kb cache and 8Mb to 64Mb main memory, up to four 332Mb disks, 296Mb tape streamer and three dimensional graphics resolution of 1,024 by 1,024, with prices starting at around $15,000 for the 3540 under VMS and the 3520 under Ultrix. The DECstation 210, 316 and 320 – no doubt 10MHz 80286 and 16MHz and 20MHz 80386 MS-DOS machines – coming from Tandy Corp – are apparently initially only for the US market, and DEC a spring announcement is expected for Europe. On the software front, look for VAX Decision Expert; Ultrix Workstation graphics program; and Combined Document Architecture to merge text and graphics.
