Fremont, California-based Sigma Designs Inc has a compression add-on board for the Apple Computer Inc Macintosh IIci and IIsi computers, which it claims provides the fastest available way to double mass storage. According to Sigma, DoubleUp works eight times faster than software-based compression and decompression offerings and will compress image, data or program files. The board is based on a 40MHz Stac 9703 chip from Carlsbad, California-based Stac Electronics, which is designed to compress and decompress files at or above the speed that the Macintosh system takes to access information from the hard disk. Says Sigma, hardware-based compression products currently on the market, designed specifically for image compression, aren’t acceptable for users working with word processing, spreadsheets or program files, because their Lossy compression technique permanently eliminates chunks of file data. With lossless compression, no information is lost or changed. DoubleUp costs $230 and will be available through most computer retail and distribution channels in February. The board comes bundled with Salient Software Inc’s DiskDoubler 3.0 compression software interface, launched in June for the Macintosh market, and is consistent with the Macintosh Finder. Sigma and Salient have signed an exclusive licensing agreement naming Sigma the sole distributor of DiskDoubler in Macintosh hardware products using lossless compression technology. Sigma Designs, which has been producing add-in display cards for the Macintosh for four years, plans to introduce a Macintosh SE version of DoubleUp later in 1991. The company demonstrated DoubleUp at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco last week, incorporated in a new 40MHz 68030 microprocessor-based accelerator add-in board for the Macintosh II due out in March. This features a high speed 32Kb static RAM cache and has an optional 20MHz 68882 floating point co-processor for the IIsi. The Sigma Bullet 3040 is designed to provide Mac IIfx performance on IIci and IIsi systems by matching the IIfx’s processor speed. For the Mac IIsi, Bullet 3040 has an installation kit with an additional expansion slot accepting any add-in card that meets Apple’s 68030 Processor Direct Slot standard for the Macintosh SE/30 and IIsi. For the Mac IIci, the board plugs directly into the single cache slot, leaving the system’s three standard NuBus slots free. The Bullet 3040 will be available for around $2,000. The IIsi 20 MHz 68882 floating point co-processor will be $200.
