Tandy Corp’s Grid Systems Corp in Fremont, California unveiled its FieldNet as the first advanced communications system for portable computer users. FieldNet is a wide area store-and-forward network system designed to give field sales representatives, service technicians, auditors, engineers and other professionals on the move the ability to communicate with other parts of their organisation. The product consists of a host that is installed back at base running the Banyan Systems Vines/386 network operating system and the laptop computers. There are three servers – FieldNet/386 for headquarters; FieldNet/SX for connecting regional offices across a wide area network; FieldNet/EXP for portable servers running applications like team auditing and field engineering. FieldNet/386 can connect to IBM, DEC and other central computers and systems such as IBM Profs, while supporting the network: it uses a 20MHz 80386 CPU with 8Mb, 10 slots and 200Mb disk and supports up to six modems at $26,000. FieldNet/SX has a 5Mb 80386SX CPU, seven slots, 100Mb disk and support for six modems at $19,500. FieldNet/EXP is the GridCase 1535 EXP laptop with 12.5MHz 4Mb 80386 CPU and 100Mb disk, a2,400bps MNP Level 5 error correcting modem at $21,450. As well as Vines/386, all include FieldNet server software, FieldNet Secretary, which Grid describes as a transaction processing agent automating networ data flow, external 150MB tape drive, server installation and training, and one year of software service and support. GridMail Plus electronic mail is $175 per client workstation and FieldNet API development software is $2,000 on a per-developer licence. Shipments start August and Grid looks to software developers to come up with additional applications for the FieldNet system it says Dynatec Systems Corp, Libertyville, Illinois, and Snap Software, Manchester, New Hampshire are integrating it into their sales automation software.
