Low-cost Sparcstation-compatible machines can also be expected out of Trigem Inc, the Korean firm, and Twinhead Inc, another Taiwanese company, probably by the end of the year. Both have licensed SunOS from Interactive Systems Corp, the only source for the software other than Sun itself. Also expected to jump into the fray in the next few months is a Fremont, California start-up called Solatrix, a division of Able Technologies. While still aiming at the low-end of the market, it is believed to be toying with some higher performance specs and a more expensive price point, aiming to set itself apart with its disk handling, networking and graphics capabilities including its own version of GX. Solatrix has just stuck its toe in the Sun arena with a $400 add-in board that gives a single-slot Sbus card a Centronics parallel port. All three firms are apparently aiming at the Sparcstation 1 market. For its part Interactive figures that except for a few aberrations such as Mars, FPS Computing and Goldstar which went direct to Sun for their code, it’s been getting the bulk of the inquiries for the last six months. It says so far it has had 80 projects from almost as many companies come its way – 50% from offshore. Some of course will die along the way but it still figures the majority of them are viable though probably with niche products. Interactive’s own forecast projects 30,000 third party Sparc machines shipped in the next 12 months. The technology of course is easy to get, but distribution is another story.
