NCR Corp has added a Model 85 at the top end of its proprietary System 10000 small mainframe line, which runs the mid-range ITX operating system. The System 10000 is derived from the I-9300 machine which was built around NCR’s NCR 32 32-bit slice universal emulator chip. The new model consists of multiple dyadic processors linked by the NCR-developed SCSI Inter-Processor Bus. As a step towards fault-tolerance, communications modules are sharable and and SCSI peripherals are switchable between the processor complexes. Systems resources for the Model 85 are controlled by an operator with a personal computer console running ITX Windows, and the machine is upgradable from the Model 75. As part of the company’s Co-operative Computing Environment, NCR added support for Token Ring and Ethernet TCP/IP in the ITX operating system, so that users can operate their systems with NCR Tower Unix machines, personal computers, top-end NCR 9800 mainframe systems and non-NCR systems in an enterprise-wide network. With the Token Ring connection, a personal computer can connect to the ITX system using ITX Windows and perform all the functions of a TTY-connected terminal. With a TCP/IP Telnet connection, the personal computer user can connect to an ITX system as well as to other NCR and non-NCR systems while appearing as a locally attached terminal on the System 10000. The user can also transfer files between the various systems. The System 10000 Model 85 sells for from $485,000 to $600,000.
