Xerox Corp and its Rank Xerox affiliate yesterday revealed first fruits of the monster $200m OEM contract with Sun Microsystems Inc, launching the Sun Sparcstation IPC as the Xerox 6520 workstation, with its GlobalView document processing software bundled. It also plans to make GlobalView available on third party machines under Unix and OS/2. The 6520, to which Xerox contributed the interface, screen and keyboard technology, come with from 8Mb to 24Mb of memory, 200Mb disk, Sun Sbus and SCS interfaces, run SunOS 4.1 and start at $15,000. GlobalView, an integrated document environment combining graphics, word processing, imaging, scanning, publishing, printing, electronic mail and terminal emulation, is also being offered as a hardware-software combination for 80286, 80386 and 80486 AT bus machines running OS/2 at $12,000 with 4Mb and a 19 monochrome screen. Both new products ship in November. The company plans to offer the board in its own personal computers next year – when it has signed an OEM agreement on the machines with an unidentified manufacturer. The 6520 workstation is the result of a three-year technology agreement signed with Sun in October 1987 (CI No 797): the pact will be renewed next month. Xerox plans to offer GlobalView on a small number of carefully-chosen Unix machines in the future. GlobalView, derived from the environment on the original Xerox Star workstations, runs on the company’s existing 6085 machines, which will be phased out over time. It took 30 months to convert the 2m lines of code to run on the Sparc under Unix. Xerox will add add PostScript and Hewlett-Packard LaserJet compatibility and full colour printing services to GlobalView next year. It is also doing further development work on the Op en Look Unix user interface with Sun and says that new hardware under development at its Palo Alto Research Center will also feature in future Sun workstations.
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