Waltham, Massachusetts-based Computer Consoles Inc really seems to have it in for its chairman, John Cunningham’s former berth, Wang Laboratories Inc. Last year, the company signed with Kerridge Computers Ltd for Basic language conversion tools to attack the Wang 2200 base, and yesterday the company opened a second front against Wang with two new products aimed at the flagship VS market. VSPower is a new software product that converts Wang VS Cobol applications to Micro Focus Cobol running on Computer Consoles mini and microcomputers under Unix. Beginning with the Wang VS Cobol source code the conversion program, Cascaid, dissects the program into a portable intermediate code format. The intermediate code is modified into a format that can be constructed into the target Cobol. The program is finally rebuilt from the modified intermediate code into Micro Focus Cobol. Programs are converted in batch, with no limit on the number of programs that can be converted at one time. The company says the product provides a runtime system similar to the Wang VS environment for application development and execution. Computer Consoles has also signed an agreement with Dawn Office Automation Services Inc, San Francisco. Under the agreement Computer Consoles will market PowerConversion, a package based on Dawn Power Conversions, which converts documents between word processing programs and Computer Consoles’ OfficePower Unix-based office automation system in a revisable format. The package includes two modules that provide co existence between Wang VS/OIS systems and Computer Consoles Unix systems, and enable OfficePower users to read and write Wang 360Kb floppy archive disks. A VS Power run-time system is UKP1,000, a full development system is UKP10,000. Power Conversion is UKP350 to UKP7,000. Together with Basic-K, a Wang 2200 Basic to Computer Consoles Unix conversion product launched in June 1987 (CI No 704), the two new packages represent what the company described as a broadside at Wang’s multi-million dollar business and are available in the fourth quarter of the year.
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