Eight months later than it originally promised, Insignia Solutions Ltd is now ready to release its 80486 emulation product, SoftWindows 2.0, on Macintosh PowerPC systems, and has an announcement scheduled for the opening of MacWorld in Boston next week. Unix versions for Hewlett-Packard Co, Digital Equipment Corp, IBM Corp, Silicon Graphics Inc, Sparc and NeXT workstations will all be out by the end of the fourth quarter, marking the first time the company has been able to manage a simultaneous multi-vendor release. The reason for that, and for the delay, is the implementation of the company’s new Emulation Description Language, a rules-based system that enables much easier transfer between processor types. Insignia, based in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire in the UK and Mountain View, California in the US, also struggled with the extra complexities of enhanced mode Windows, which means that the new version runs only at the same speed as SoftWindows 1.0 would on the same machine. It takes up 12Mb on a Macintosh, meaning that a 16Mb Mac is required to emulate a 4Mb personal computer. The Windows NT version is dependent on Microsoft Corp’s schedules, but a beta test version should be out in November. A Windows95 version is still six months down the line, as Insignia is still waiting for the source code. SoftWindows 2.0 survives the ultimate compatibility test on the Mac – it can run the Doom II game – although it currently lacks SoundBlaster support. No US prices for it yet, but in the UK it will cost ú330. Apple Computer Inc has a bundling option but has yet to make its intentions clear. Insignia remained tightlipped over those rumoured Phantom and Stringfellow native Windows projects for non-iAPX-86 systems, but said that those efforts are likely to end up as a mixture of emulation and native code.
