New DEC announcement, 7/11

[Mitsuharu Hadeishi]

In article <18553 at mimsy.UUCP> steve at fnord.umiacs.umd.edu (Steven D. Miller) writes:
>
>   DEC had a big product announcement on 7/11.  Since I haven't seen anything
>here about the announcements, I thought I'd summarize what I know.  I'm almost
>certain that other machines (in the VAX line at least, which I confess that I
>pay little attention to) were announced; see your sales rep for more details.
>
>   Here's the quick summary of what was announced:
>
>	1) DECstation 2100.  This is like a 3100, but runs at a lower clock
>	rate.  It's about 9-10 MIPS, but is otherwise identical to the 3100.
>	The list price is substantially lower than on the DECstation 3100,
>	and DEC claims that the 2100 meets or beats SPARCstation 1
>	performance.  (DEC says the 2100 is $1K cheaper than the SS1, but I
>	think they're both around $9K for an entry-level system.  The
>	DECstation is probably a little bit cheaper.  I could just be
>	confused...)

One difference, however, I found when calling my local DEC rep, is the
2100 "extra" costs:

For base 8Mb system, $7998 (4Mb is about $7000).

15" monitor $1224 ($1800 for 19").

Smallest disk you can buy is 332Mb, $6500. (according to the rep)

"Documentation package" $2004 (only need one per installation).

Tape drive $3500 (only need one per installation).

Total minimum cost of 1 standalone 8Mb unit would be . . . $21K!

For many users, this means nothing, since their DECStations would be
networked.  However, if you're like me (a very small company) and are only
going to buy one or two workstations, the Sparcstation 1 is still a LOT
cheaper for an entry-level system ($12600 for a 17" mono system with a
100Mb hard drive and a 1/4" tape drive, which for some reason is half the
price of the DEC tape drive.)