Texas Instruments Inc, which owns the patents on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-developed 32-bit NuBus that is the basis of Apple’s Macintosh II and the Texas Business System 1500 and Explorer machines, has developed two NuBus interface chips that it reckons will make it much easier for board designers to bring add-on NuBus products to market. Texas hopes the chips will also spur other computer manufacturers to adopt the high-speed NuBus as the basis of their machines, and may even decide to use the bus it its forthcoming Sparc-based business computers. The two devices are designed to reduce the parts count for implementing NuBus to three devices from a minimum of 23, saving board space, power and stuffing time. The set, described by Texas as the generic 32-bit master-slave solution, is in BiCMOS, combining fast bipolar with low-power CMOS technology, and comprises the SN74ACT2440 NuBus Controller and SN74BCT2420 NuBus Transceiver; ships in October at $50 apiece in small quantities. ExperTelligence Inc, Goleta, California, has won a software development contract from the Data Systems Group of Texas wnstruments under which it will develop a program that will be part of the standard system delivered by Texas with each copy of the Apple Mac II-based microExplorer. ExperTelligence is to do a bridge to enable full Lisp programming to be combined with the ease of use of the Mac interface.
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