Power work station

Press, 1 August 1989, Page 33

Power work station

Cheap computational power for a work station on a network is offered by the Informate Inform Station I, being sold by Professional Systems International for $2BOO. The computer comes without disk storage, though a I.2Mb five and a quarter or a 3.5 in external floppy drive can be attached. It is driven by an 80286 processor running at either BMHz or 12MHz with zero wait states. The price of $2BOO does not include a network card, which will add $6OO to $lOOO to the price. Any standard network card can be added. The machine comes with 512 K of RAM memory, expandable to 4Mb. It has Hercules-style onecolour graphics, but a VGA version is expected to be available in New Zealand by the end of the year. Two serial ports mean a printer can be run directly from the terminal, and a mouse can be plugged in. It also has a parallel port.

“This is the ideal network station,” said Mr Doug Hill, marketing manager of PSI. He believes the machine, with a network card, is $5OO to $l5OO cheaper than basic standalone AT-compatible microcomputers. Having nO disk storage helps control the flow of outside programs and materials on to a network. It also makes it harder for network information to be copied for use elsewhere: the information will have to be copied through the network’s central disk drives or printer. “People are bringing viruses and junk on to networks through floppy drives at their work stations,” Mr Hill said. "They are putting things on and taking things off that they should not be.”

The machine thus has most of the security of a dumb terminal with the computational advantages of a good personal computer.

The manufacturer is Informate, of Hong Kong;