Helping IBM Corp with its campaign to persuade users that the ES/9000 mainframe has a future as a giant server, Burlington, Massachusetts-based Bus-Tech Inc has joined forces with Novell Inc and IBM itself to provide customers with a single high-speed interconnect controller designed specifically to connect NetWare environments directly with IBM mainframes. The 3172-BT1 combines IBM’s 3172 hardware, Novell’s NetWare and NetWare for SAA software and Bus-Tech’s channel-attach technology, and it will be installed and supported directly by IBM. The 3172 BT1 is built on a custom version of the 3172 model 3 Interconnect Controller and uses Bus-Tech’s Micro Channel-to-Channel Adaptor board, which emulates a locally attached 3174 controller and runs at up to 4.5M-bytes-per-second. NetWare for SAA will be pre-configured on the 3172-BT1 with appropriate local net interface boards; December at from $21,950.
