NEC Corp’s position as the runaway market leader in personal computers in Japan with its PC-9800 series remains unchallenged, and it is not about to abdicate its throne voluntarily. Last month it became the first manufacturer to launch a machine built around the stripped-down 20MHz Intel Corp 80486SX chip, which has the on-board cache but not the maths co-processor. The new line consists of six desktop models of what is called the PC-H98S. As well as the 32-bit architecture, offering twice the speed of the previous top machine, the PC-9801DA, the new desktop machines use the NESA bus, a proprietary 32-bit bus that NEC hopes to establish as a standard in Japan as IBM Corp is attempting with the Micro Channel, by throwing open the specifications to rival manufacturers like Seiko-Epson Corp, which builds clones of the PC-9800 machines. The bus has a data transfer rate of 33Mbytes-per-second, 3.3 times the previous top speed, and supports a memory address space of 4Gb. With a normal mode 640 by 400 pixel screen, the floppy disk model is just under $4,000, while the 40Mb and 100Mb hard disk models are $5,000 and $5,740 respectively. The 16-colour screen (256 colour support is optional) uses a new graphics controller chip, the AGDC Advanced Graphic Display Controller along with the existing E2GC graphics chip. Memory goes to 16Mb, and at the launch, NEC demonstrated it running a Japanese language version of Santa Cruz Operation Inc’s Unix System V.386, which has so far sold 8,000 copies in Japan. It was also running IXI Ltd’s X.Desktop with Motif. In addition, and attracting more attention, was the latest notebook model in the PC-9800 series, the PC-9801NS/E (known as the 98NOTE SX/E). This features a 16MHz 80386SX CPU with a user-changeable 20Mb or 40Mb hard drive, a side-lit black and white LCD screen (which is easier to see than the previous blue screen), a resume function and a CRT Pack, which slots in instead of one of the two battery packs and supports connection of an analogue RGB monitor. The new notebook is priced at $2,000 in its floppy disk base model, and just over $3,000 in the 40Mb hard disk version. The company also launched a range of new peripherals including a thermal printer for the notebook computer, with three Japanese language fonts and a snail-like print speed of 70 characters a minute. It is also claiming the world’s thinnest 40Mb external Winchester – the thing is 1.8 thick, which doesn’t sound that thin. The company also launched a CD-ROM and optical disk drive for the 9800s. NEC hopes to sell 150,000 of the H98S desktops and 250,000 of the 98NOTE SX/E over the next 12 months. According to figures recently released by the Japan Electronics Industry Development Association, total personal computer shipments in the financial year to March 31 were 2.7m machines, with NEC’s share at 1.1m of those. NEC reckons that to increase its share of the market further, it has no alternative but to keep bringing out more models, with the aim of reaching the magic figure of 100,000 sales per month. However NEC’s strategy with the PC-9801 units is confined to the Japanese market and it currently has no intention of using any of this technology in products for the US or other overseas market, according to a spokesman. – Anita ByrnesFujitsu Ltd and its Fujitsu VLSI affiliate have come out with an optical disk controller, the MB86503, which incorproates on one chip functions for writing and reading control, error correction and buffer memory control of 3.5 erasable optical disks: the new controller is based on the ISO standard format for 3.5 inch opticl disks, and is the world’s first implementation of these functions on one chip, Fujitsu claims; the sample price $51 and Fujitsu expects to move from sample production to volume in October, producing at a rate of 100,000 units per month.
