As promised in April (CI No 657) ICL Friday unveiled its DRS Professional Workstation, PWS, to run under the new multi-tasking MS-DOS 4.1 from MicroSoft. Ac-cording to ICL, PWS is designed to fill the gap in the marketplace between the single user micro’s day to day role and its role in management support. MS-DOS 4.1, […]
As promised in April (CI No 657) ICL Friday unveiled its DRS Professional Workstation, PWS, to run under the new multi-tasking MS-DOS 4.1 from MicroSoft. Ac-cording to ICL, PWS is designed to fill the gap in the marketplace between the single user micro’s day to day role and its role in management support. MS-DOS 4.1, exclusively available through ICL, provides a stepping stone to MS-OS/2, promised by MicroSoft for the end of this year. Its multi-tasking capability allows applications to run simultaneously in the background and foreground, a facility which is extended with MS Windows software. The PC that’s truly come of age is based on an 8MHz 80286 with 1Mb of zero wait state memory expandable to 4Mb now, 16Mb by November. It will operate stand-alone or as part of a DRS Microlan2 network and is available in English, French and German versions. It has six AT, two XT and five ICL slots, and comes in three models – 12/00 with 1.2Mb 5.25 floppy and mono screen for UKP2,195; 12/20 with 1.2Mb floppy, 20Mb Winchester and colour screen for UKP2,695, and 12/45 with 45Mb, Microlan2 adaptor and colour screen for UKP3,395. Communications include X25 and there are VT220, TTY and viewdata em- lations. MS-DOS 4.1 is bundled, but Unix and Concurrent DOS are also offered. ICL says it is work ing on an 80386 model for 1988, and plans a PWS with integral modem.
