The San Jose, California-based Madge Networks unit of Madge NV has announced an AT Token Ring adaptor and a suite of IBM Corp-compatible software drivers, claiming that, used together, they improve performance by up to 90% over comparable IBM shared memory adaptors and software. Indeed, the company further claims that the Fast Blue software drivers can be used with IBM adaptors, and that they can improve performance on these by up to 20%. The Blue+ adaptor uses Madge’s RingRunner technology (CI No 2,395), and is claimed to be full-duplex Token Ring-ready. Both the adaptor and software have been certified by the Token Ring interoperability test suite at the Technical Resources Interoperability Laboratory. The software and adaptors are shipping now. An adaptor costs $325 (inclusive of a single-user Fast Blue licence); the software costs $200 for a 10-user licence, $4,000 for 250 users.
