Meantime Apple has announced its Integrated Services Digital Network interface board for NuBus Macs, saying that it is the first NuBus interface card available in North America for connecting the Mac computers to basic-rate ISDN. The firm also revealed its architecture plans for integrating telephone functionality and services for the Mac. The new architecture is based on a new system software extension to the communications toolbox, called the Telephone Manager, which provides a core set of telephone functions for developing and implementing integrated speech applications, which should work on any NuBus Mac. The $1,100 Apple ISDN NB Card uses the Macintosh Co-processor Platform, based on a 68000 microprocessor and 512Kb of memory. It implements the CCITT ISDN basic rate interface 2B+D and supports a standard analogue dual-tone multifrequency telephone. It is compatible with ISDN on AT&T Co’s 5ESS and Northern Telecom Ltd’s DMS-100 telephone exchanges, providing direct access to 64Kbps and 56Kbps connections. They also support the CCITT V120 and V110 rate adaptation protocols. The board will ship in t US next month, and includes Apple ISDN software, the Telephone Manager, ISDN Tools, and an external power supply that enables the phone to act independently of the computer when the latter is off. Apple president Michael Spindler said at NetWorld in Dallas that the the first product arising from the alliance with IBM Corp will be available by the end of the year – it will be a new 16/4 Mbps Token Ring board for the Mac, to be available December at $1,000 with TokenTalk.
