NCR Corp now claims to be amongst the largest shippers of Unix systems with its Tower Series, and that success has begun to attract clonemakers hoping to cash in on its success. MicroSage Computer Systems of Reno, Nevada, has been attempting to establish its Stride 600 Series supermicros for a number of years – it used to be called Sage and MicroSage is a new one on us but often faced objections from customers over the availability of software for the range: now it plans to get over that by offering full binary compatibility with the NCR Tower range. The capability is available as a user-installable software upgrade, and will allow the vast majority of applications already written for the Tower Series to be run unaltered on Stride systems, with those on quarter inch tape directly transferable. MicroSage insists that the 68020-based Stride systems, which support multi-processing via a VMEbus, are not simply NCR copies, but faster and cheaper – and that a series of announcements due shortly will allow the company to offer as wide a range as NCR does with the Tower family.
