Systech Corp, which supplies many of the major Unix hardware manufacturers with terminal control equipment, has launched the Unplug, a communications control system that can support from 16 to 255 serial peripheral devices on a single co-axial link, taking up a single slot in the host computer. Unplug includes terminal control software residing in the Unix operating system kernel, which provides the software interface to the single 68000-based Systech input-output board. The system can boost the performance of VMEbus and Multibus systems by up to 20%, according to Systech. The single co-axial cable connects to a BNC connector on the host, and from there links to up to 15 remote cluster controllers handling eight or 16 serial devices each. Users can be up to 1,000 feet away from the host, or up to three miles using Systech’s SPUR pluriaxial Unplug repeater, which incorporates fibre optic technology. Formed in 1981, San Diego, California-based Systech is now a $25m corporation: customers include Unisys Corp, Eastman Kodak, Computervision, the Applied Digital Data Systems division of NCR Corp, Nokia Data, Data General and NEC Corp. Currently, manufacturing is carried out just across the border in Mexico, but with an increasing proportion of European business, the company has recently opened its European headquarters in Winchester, Hampshire and plans to have UK-based manufacturing facilities in place by the end of 1990.
