Peacock AG, the Wnnenberg, Germany-based personal computer manufacturer is shipping variants of the RS/6000, using motherboards from IBM Corp, reports PowerPC News. Following a deal signed with IBM in March, the company is fitting IBM motherboards into its own cabinets. The CTM9664 is not just a straight RS/6000: Peacock configures its boxes with more expansion slots, dual power supplies and so on. Kuno Hartmann, who heads Peacock’s server operation, says that the company may have a PowerPC Reference Platform-compliant desktop ready in the first quarter of 1995. Currently he is evaluating motherboards from IBM, but expects some samples from Motorola Inc in a couple of weeks. The main factor determining whether Peacock builds PowerPC Reference Platform-compliant machine is the operating system. Novell Inc dominates the conservative German personal computer server market to an even greater extent than in some other countries and Windows NT has made virtually no impact. Even NetWare users have a tendency to stick with the tried and tested NetWare 3.2. Do you know how many users of Windows NT there are in Germany? You can count them on your fingers, says Hartmann. Moreover, he is not too happy with the performance of NT on PowerPC at the moment, describing the implementation as weak. He points out, however, that he is playing with an early beta release.
