Philips UK yesterday launched its first Unix-based machines in the UK – and although it claims them to be new, Unit-C, now out of business, claimed to have a remarkably similar product from Philips last year (CI No 519). The P9000 comes in two versions, the P9070 and P9X00. The P9070 is a 68020-based VME bus product from Motorola running the V/68 implementation of Unix. The P9X00 uses a proprietary Philips bus, PGP-Bus, and is based on the Motorola 68000 series. For the P9300 and P9200 the Motorola 68010 and 68020 are available but the P9100 can only use the 68010. The P9300 has either one 8 or two 5.25 hard disks; up to two 5.25 floppy drives; one 45Mb streamer tape; and a PGP-bus with 20 slots. The P9200 has up to two 5.25 hard disks; 45Mb tape streamer; and a PGP-Bus with 10 slots. The P9100 is supplied as a diskless or disk-based unit and has four PGP-Bus slots. The P9X00 uses Philips’ own MPX implementation of Unix, claimed to be superior to System V although conformant to the SVID and X/Open portability guide. It has proprietary tools and transaction processing enhancements for service industries. The P9070 is aimed at P7000 users and the P9XOO at P9X00 users.
