The Eazy PC from Zenith Data Systems arrived in the UK yesterday with a base price of UKP499. The Personalike, based on a NEC V40 processor – equivalent to an 80188 – running at 7.16MHz, features a 14 monochrome monitor that displays high-resolution graphics and text on a white background, resembling a printed page. It […]
The Eazy PC from Zenith Data Systems arrived in the UK yesterday with a base price of UKP499. The Personalike, based on a NEC V40 processor – equivalent to an 80188 – running at 7.16MHz, features a 14 monochrome monitor that displays high-resolution graphics and text on a white background, resembling a printed page. It uses the same double-scan CGA video technology as the IBM PS/2 Model 30, which doubles the resolutionof standard CGA video to 400 horizontal lines from 200 but maintains compatibility with all standard CGA software. Most notable feature is the MS-DOS Manager user interface, which Zenith was the first to use – it says that it helped Microsoft with development of the system, which uses windows and pull-down menus to make instructions obvious at a glance. The Eazy PC has 512Kb V40 CPU, expandable to 640Kb, and MS-DOS 3.2 behind the Manager. Three configurations are on offer: Model 1 has a 720Kb 3.5 disk drive and retails at UKP499; Model 2 features two 720Kb drives for UKP599; the Model 20 has 20Mb hard disk and 3.5 floppy for UKP899. Zenith also launched its new Z-286 PC to be available in October of this year. It says it enables users to take advantage of the OS/2 technology and features 3.5 or 5.25 disk drives and a new Z-449 video card. The card provides 640 by 480 line display and supports software on digital and analogue monitors as well as RGB. The machines come with MS-DOS 3.21, which according to Zenith is the first operating system to support a disk cache for hard and floppy drives. The cache improves access time to the hard drive by up to 50% and to the floppy by as much as 400%. MS-DOS 3.21 supports 3.5, 1.44Mb floppy drives. Z-286s use an 8MHz Intel 80286 and 512Kb of RAM standard, expandable to 15Mb. The Model 3 with two 3.5 floppy drives sells at UKP1,845 while the Model 23, with single 3.5 1.44Mb floppy drive and 20Mb Winchester is UKP2,295. The Model 25 with 5.25 1.2Mb floppy and 20Mb Winchester comes in at UKP1,995.
