Digital Unveils 2 Workstations to Vie With Those by Sun

Digital Equipment Corp. introduced two desktop computer workstations Tuesdaythat it said were compatible with standards being developed by the 21-company AdvancedComputing Environment (ACE) consortium.

With prices starting at $6,500, the new machines are aimed directly at the mostpopular low-end workstation offered by market leader Sun Microsystems. The machinesfeature a novel upgrade capability that allows the central processing unit to bereplaced.

The products fill out Digital Equipment’s family of workstations that use acomputer-on-a-chip from Mips Computer Systems. The ACE standards, not yet fullydefined, will include the Mips chip and a software operating system that closelyresembles one of Digital Equipment’s. Digital Equipment said softwareapplications written for its new machines would therefore run on future ACE-compatible systems.