State-of-the-art Multimedia Platform

[Tin "Man" Le]

In article <91036.120632UH2 at psuvm.psu.edu> UH2 at psuvm.psu.edu (Lee Sailer) writes:
>
>I am working on an R&D project for the Navy Bureau of Medicine.
>In a nutshell, the goal of the project is to integrate several
>existing and new functions into a single, transportable system
>for use by Medical Corpsman.  The system functions include
>everything from office automation tasks such as
>
> o  Records, inventory, and patient history management
> o  Word processing, telecomm, spreadsheet
> o  Hypermedia access to numerous medical manuals
> o  Full-motion video display of medical procedures and expert
>    system diagnostic support.
> o  Voice recognition and text/screen to voice conversion
>
>Corpsman are the people who operate the medical facilities.
>While stationed at a large base, they run the sick bay, schedule
>immunizations and periodic exams, manage inventory, and so on.
>However, at smaller locations, especially isolated ones such as
>submarines, they become responsible for more and more of the
>primary health care, and may even be called upon to perform the
>kind of procedures, including diagnosis, normally reserved for
>MDs only.
>
>We have reached a point where we need to re-evaluate the original
>platform chosen:  MSDOS 4.01, 486, 200MB SCSI, CD-ROM, Laser Disc
>player, 1GB read-write optical, mouse, and VGA.
>
>One of the Primary Goals of the project is to *assemble* the
>system from available hardware and software.  This is why we
>started with MSDOS, since there is more available hardware and
>software in that marketplace than in others.
>
>However (you've probably guessed), we are having a very hard time
>squeezing it all into one, integrated system.  Even using a
>memory manager such as QEMM386 v5.1 there are just too many
>device drivers and workspace buffers.  In fact, some of the
>products we are trying to squeeze in pretty much require their
>own 640K machine to run, period.
>
>THE QUESTION...
>
>So, what other platforms should we consider?  What software and
>hardware is available for OS/2, SparcStation, NeXT and so on that
>could be used to assemble such a system.
>
>I would be grateful for any ideas, especially descriptions of
>available products such as voice recognition or Hypermedia.  We
>are mostly MSDOS and Amiga wise, and so need most of our advice
>for the others.

  First let me state that I work for Sony, however I don't speak for
  the company.  I won't pretend to be objective about this, but you
  might want to check out our products.

  We recently announced a RISC based laptop with similar configuration
  to what you posted.

	NWS-3250 Portable Workstation
	RISC based (MIPS R3000 and R3010 FPU) at 20MHz
	17MIPS, 1.8 MFLOPS
	8MB RAM standard, expandable to 32MB
	64KB cache (32KB data+32KB instruction)
	240MB or 406MB internal SCSI HD (formatted)
	11" backlit LCD (1120x780 resolution)
	External SCSI, serial, parallel, Ethernet, mouse ports
	Mouse included (3 buttons)
	Audio interface: 16 and 8 bit A/D and D/A, stereo/mono

	Software includes (standard):
		UNIX System V Release 4
		TCP/IP, XNS, NFS, and X11R4
		Motif v1.1
		Sound library and editor
		C compiler

	List price for minimal system: $9900.00
		(8MB RAM, 240MB HD, software)

   We also offer MO (Magneto Optical drives), DAT, and other Sony
   peripherals.

  This information is from our flyer for the machine.  You might want
  to contact a local Sony Microsystem sales-person for more information.

  I am in the R&D group that ported SVR4 to the machine so I'd happy to
  answer technical questions about it.

-- Tin

-- 
.----------------------------------------------------------------------
. Tin Le                    Work Internet: tin at smsc.Sony.COM
. Sony Microsystems              UUCP: {uunet,mips}!sonyusa!tin
. Work: (408) 944-4157      Home Internet: tin at szebra.uu.net