The VS family may be under notice to perform or be terminated, but Wang Laboratories Inc is giving it all the help it can and has upgraded the VS operating system to provide connection for more VS system users, and has announced a new VS input-output mass storage system based on SCSI-2. The new VS version 7.30.04 enables up to 998 workstations to be connected and up to 512 active tasks to be carried out simultaneously. It also includes new extended serial device support software, which enables serial input-output controllers within a VS system to be configured with twice the number of logic devices previously supported. Users of Wang VS systems can be upgraded free of charge. A new input-output mass storage subsystem is based on the ANSI-SCSI X3.131 1986 standard, so that peripherals conforming to this standard can be connected to the VS systems. The subsystem consists of two SCSI input-output controllers, priced at the equivalent of $22,500 for the single SCSI bus version and $31,000 with two independent SCSI buses and 4Mb of cache; a tape cassette drive, at $34,400; an SCSI tape drive and SCSI disk drives with storage capacity ranging from 320Mb at $3,000, to 1.37Gb costing $10,000. The new input-output subsystem, Computerwoche reports, is supported by Wang’s current generation VS 7000, 8000 and 10000 machines.
