Motorola Computer Inc duly introduced its new MultiPersonal Computer line in New York yesterday morning at the plush Rainbow Room atop New York’s Rockefeller Centre, claiming to bring the advantages of technical workstations, including high-resolution graphics, to the commercial market. A key part of the launch was an endorsement of X-station developer Network Computing Devices of Mountain View, California, involving a major OEM deal with NCD, and the signing of a letter of intent for Motorola to take a 10% equity stake in the privately held company. There are three models in the new MC88000 RISC-based range, including the 20MHz MPC-100, 25MHz MPC-200, and dual processor 25MHz MPC-300, with a claimed performance range of from 27 to 67.2 MIPS. Each comes standard with three Network Display Stations, sourced from Network Computing Devices and available in 16 or 19 mono or 17 colour versions. The low-end machine will support up to six active, 10 casual stations, while the top-end dual processor can handle up to 32 active, 66 casual stations. From the X sta tions, users can access software on the host system or network with full high resolution X Window-based gra phics, or MS-DOS software using the CGA, VGA and EGA standards via the SoftPC emulator from Insignia Soft ware. The result, says Motorola, is pricing one third to half the price per seat of rival commercial work station systems – that’s $907 per MIPS compared with $1,328 per MIPS for the recently launched IBM Power Server workstations. Using Unix System V.3, the VME-based machines come standard with TCP/IP, NetBIOS, NFS, OSI, SMB and AppleTalk proto cols over Ethernet, Token Ring and soon the high speed FDDI topology. Other bundled software includes the Uniplex II Plus office automation package and trial version of Frame maker desktop publishing, OSF/Motif and the Looking Glass desktop manag er from Visix Software Inc, as well as an ASCI to X Window utility to aid the transition to graphics-based interfaces. Prices start at $24,000 for the MPC-100 – about $8,000 per seat for a three user system. This falls to $6,600 a seat for a 16-user MPC-300, which starts at $60,000.
