Tatung Co of Taipei is expected to introduce its first responses to Sun Microsystems Inc’s Sparcstation via its Long Beach, California-based US subsidiary within the next couple of weeks. Tipped to be called the VARstation 1 series, it is likely to include server models at around three-quarters of the price of similarly-configured Sun machines. Tatung won the race between the Sparc clonemakers to show a Sparcstation 1-compatible systems when it showed the TWS-5000 at Comdex last November (CI No 1,397). There are now understood to be three models in existence, a TWS-3000, the TWS-5000 and a top-end TWS-7000. The TWS-5000 uses a 25MHz version of the Sparc from Cypress Semiconductor, is rated at 15 MIPS and 3 MFLOPS, comes with from 8Mb to 32Mb memory, Ethernet, six VME slots, SCSI, colour monitor and runs SunOS. Low-end models will start at some $8,000 with a Sparcserver 330 rival at around $23,000. The TWS-7000 runs a 25MHz version of the Fujitsu Sparc and comes with from 8Mb to 32Mb memory. US ships are set for the third quarter but the machines are not expected here until early next year. Tatung is also said to be working on a Sparc-based system using an AT bus and keyboard.
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