Although the company does not like to use these descriptions itself, a diskless personal computers or an X-less X terminal is how Digital Equipment Corp’s latest windowing network text terminal, officially the VT LAN40, can most easily be described. The unit actually started life a couple of years ago when DEC shut some engineers in a room and asked them to come up with a design for one of those Alpha windowing terminals, but not Alpha AXP RISC, that were supposed to be on everyone’s desks by now, but have apparently sunk without trace. Rather than an Alpha terminal, the DEC people emerged with what they believe is an answer to a different question, namely a unit that organisations can put on the desktops of a large numbers of users for accessing multiple existing production applications across internal and external networks, drawing on company-wide data resources, while maintaining security and central management. The VT LAN40 is perceived as a low price, connected desktop with low support, training and upgradability costs, high reliability that will be an information systems department or value-added reseller purchase decision. It is definitely not for the user that requires new and individual applications and local data, minimal security and control of their own system management resources. As such, DEC sees the VT LAN40, codenamed Griffin, as a replacement for some parts of the X terminal space – such as the estimated 50,000 X terminals sold last year that are being used only for text windowing, not X-personal computers being used as terminals, IBM Corp 3270 and 5250s and plain ASCII/ANSI terminals. The thing comes preconfigured with thin, thick or twisted pair Ethernet, supporting TCP/IP, DECnet, and LAT, plus full serial support. It includes ReGIS and Tektronix 4010/4014 graphi cs emulations and is seen as the logical upgrade for DEC’s own VT240, VT330, VT340 and other graphics terminals. It comes with local Windows 3.1 as the windows manager – VT420, 320, 220, 131, 100 and 52 text, and VT340, 330, 241, 240 and 125 (graphics) emulation sessions (up to eight at one time) are launched from a control panel as separate, independent windows.

Stored in ROM

It supports 12 keyboard languages, three keyboard types and English, French, German and Spanish windowing. All emulations and network protocols, plus the window manager, are stored in ROM. Configurations, reckoned to be a 10-minute set-up procedure, can be password-protected against changes. The VT LAN40 uses an 80386SX at 33MHz with from 4Mb to 10Mb RAM, a 256Kb to 1Mb A drive for user preferences and support for 4Mb to 10Mb ROMs. It is from $950 with keyboard – $1,250 with 14 colour screen – and is out now. DEC puts its estimated $1,000 configured street price up against personal computers with network board and terminal emulators starting from $1,050 to $1,340. It reckons that the only company with something similar is the small German network terminal builder IGEL, Innovative Gesamtlosungen in der Mikroelektronik GmbH, in Ausburg.