Wells American Corp, well-known on the clone circuit in the US where its striking star logo and bright brash ads are a feature of the trade papers, but scarcely known this side of the water, reckons that it has come up with the ultimate MS-DOS and OS/2 clone. Key feature of the new CompuStar line of micros will be a dual-standard bus that enables a mix of AT and PS/2 boards to be plugged into the machine – as well as taking interchangeable processor boards with any of the Intel iAPX-86 family on them. The West Columbia, South Carolina company, which boasts that its machines are US-made, studiously avoids mentioning the Micro Channel in its announcement, but says that the tower configuration machine takes 8086, 80286, 80386 or 80386SX microprocessors, and by use of plug-in bus modules, the machine can have 13 AT expansion slots, 10 PS/2 slots, or seven AT and five PS/2 slots for those who can’t make up their minds. And Wells promises that any other bus that may come along can also be accomodated. It also has seven compartments for disk or tape drives – and users will be offered an overnight module swap-out plan or on-site service from General Electric. Users will be able to trade-in the CPU module they initially took against the price any of the other more powerful modules during the first year of ownership. The company is using the new 20MHz CMOS 80286 from Harris Corp, and the 25MHz version of the 80386. CompuStar will be unveiled at the Wall Street Club in New York on July 26, with ships from August 5 for those who want an 80286. The 8086 and 80386 foll ow in September, with the snap-in PS/2 Bus and Adaptor Modules and the 80386SX CPU module in mid-Octo ber. The 8086 model starts at $995 – other prices to be given later.
