Since May 1991, Hitachi Ltd has been calling its personal computers Floras, and its first machines to be built around the Intel Corp Pentium microprocessor are called the Flora 3100 series. They are intended to be used in client-server systems and personal computer local area networks. The new machines run the bilingual DOS/V operating system. The Flora 3100s use the 66MHz version of the Pentium; the high-end Model SP66610 will be shipped from December 20 and will have standard 8Mb of memory, expandable to 352Mb, and 1Gb of storage, costing from $17,500. The new low-end Model S46600 is based on a 66MHz 80486DX2 chip, and is set for shipment from September 30 at $8,173 – at the high end, personal computer prices in Japan are still exorbitant. Hitachi says that the 3100 series machines have been designed for total performance with high-speed input-output and bus functions. Other machines in the Flora series include the Model 3010DU/DT models with an Super VGA screen and three expansion slots, while the Flora 3010CS Model V is a small footprint local network client machine, and the Flora 3010NU is a high-performance notebook machine.
