Diversifying from its Sparcsystems business, founder member of the Taiwan New PC Consortium Tatung Co has been demonstrating its PowerPC 604-based systems, the TPC-5540 and TPC-5740, at Comdex in Las Vegas. Both systems conform with the PowerPC Reference Platform. The TPC-5540 includes a 100MHz PowerPC 604 microprocessor and supports the Western Digital Corp form factor. It includes a CPU/upgrade level 2 cache socket, two 33MHz Peripheral Component Interconnect slots and two AR slots. The TPC-5740, also based on the 100MHz PowerPC 604, supports the Baby AT form factor. The system includes a CPU upgrade/level 2 cache socket, three 33MHz Peripheral Component Interconnect slots and three AT slots. Initially, the systems will support Solaris Unix and Windows NT but AIX and OS/2 for PowerPC support is planned. Tatung will target OEM customers and original design manufacturers in the desktop marketplace for initial product sales. As part of an ongoing relationship with Motorola Inc, Tatung has already shipped its 66 MHz PowerPC 601 systems to some independent software vendors so that they could develop software prior to shipment of the TPC-5540 and TPC-5740 systems. Ships start in first quarter 1995.
