National Advanced Systems unit wants to shed its image as a pure IBM plug-compatible manufacturer and to major on the scientific market with the Unix and Open Systems Interconnection standards. As a first step it yesterday launched products designed to link its Hitachi AS/XL and AS/VL IBMulators to DEC hardware. The Cross Systems Series is designed to marry the DEC VAX/VMS environment with the IBM TSO and VM/CMS environments to the VAX. The hardware component is NAS*Net, a module that fits into XL and VL racks and connects directly to a CPU channel. NAS*Net contains three NS32532 microprocessors from NAS’ parent National Semiconductor Corp, one acting as a channel interface, a second as a main processor and the third as an Ethernet controller, together creating a DECnet gateway with 28 logical links and diagnostics. The NAS*Link software on the AS turns the host into a DECnet node recognised by VMS. It is claimed to support bothways transfer between DEC’s All-In-One and IBM’s Profs, and DECmail to VM/Note. The AS user accesses the VAX using RJE, TSO or CMS commands; VAX users can manipulate host files with DCL and access individual records. NAS*Net and NAS*Link ship in May at a typical UKP84,000; UKP40,000 NAS*Com pute, for automatic translation of VAX-11 Fortran into IBM VS Fortran-77 follows on in the third quarter.
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