Up to now, Applied Digital Data Systems, the Hauppauge, New York display manufacturer just diversifying into microsystems when it was acquired bought by NCR Corp in 1979 after a bitter bid battle with Mitel Ltd of Canada, has maintained such a sturdy independence from its Dayton, Ohio parent that the relationship has been well-nigh invisible. ADDS has ploughed a successful furrow of its own with the Pick operating system running mainly on machines built around the unfancied Zilog Z8000 chip – but reports from the US say that all that is about to change. ADDS is now working on an implementation of Pick that will run side by side with Unix System V on the NCR Tower line of 32-bit 68020-based supermicros, notably the top-end Tower 32/800. No word on when the product is likely to be ready, but it should give a useful extra string to the bow of Electronic Data Systems Plc, the Sheffield company that assembles the ADDS machines for the European market and is set to move up to the Full List of the London Stock Exchange after just two years as a public company.
Content from our partners
