Lest we forget that Hewlett-Packard Co is a successful vendor of personal computers, the company has announced seven new products: network management software enhancements and an on-site warranty for its 80486-based personal-computer products, all designed for the personal computer local area network market. The new products include an 80486-based HP Vectra running at 33MHz; a mass-storage subsystem enhanced with Extended Industry Standard Architecture; SCO-Unix and optical disk drive support; as well as new hubs, transceivers and integrated network-management software for the family of EtherTwist local area network products. The new HP Vectra 486/33T PC can support more than 200 users on a local network, or 100 users of terminals based on a Unix system in a multiuser configuration. Based on the 33MHz Intel 80486 chip, it supports a new EISA Small Computer System Interface 2 subsystem that Hewlett claims improves performance for LAN and multi-user environments. Hewlett’s EISA SCSI-2 host bus adaptor can support up to seven devices, and multiple host-bus adaptors may also be used. Three enhancements to the Hewlett-Packard Storage System include the addition of an EISA host-bus adaptor, support on systems running Santa Cruz Operation Unix System V/386 and the availability of a rewritable optical disk drive for Novell NetWare 386 systems. The EtherTwist products eliminate the need for a card-cage chassis because the intelligent network-management capabilities built into each unit can be integrated as a smart-wiring system with Hewlett’s OpenView network management. The company’s EtherTwist Hub Plus/48 is designed to serve medium to large twisted-pair Ethernet workgroups with a single manageable network device. The Fiber Optic Hub Plus provides Ethernet connections among multiple workgroups within a building or among buildings on, say, a campus on a fibre network. The EtherTwist EISA Adaptor Card 32 connects PC-based servers with an industry-standard EISA bus to multi-vendor computer systems in work groups. The Fiber Optic Transceiver connects Ethernet devices to a fibre network. The ThinLAN Transceiver connects Ethernet devices to a thin coaxial network. Enhance ments to EtherTwist, OpenView Hub and Bridge Manager software, include the automatic iden tification and mapping of network topology.
