Carrera Is Distributing Circuit Boards for PCs With Mainframe Capabilities

Carrera Computers Inc., a start-up computer design company, said it has begun shipping a new circuit board for a generation of computers that pack “mainframe power in a personal computer.”

Chairman Bruce Faust said the company has launched a motherboard--the main processing unit of a computer--that will be able to run the long-anticipated Microsoft Windows NT operating system.

“We are hardware evangelists who believe in this new system,” said Faust, who is a former Toshiba manager.

Microsoft will reportedly ship its new generation operating system, or software that controls the basic functions of a computer, sometime this year, possibly in May. The system will require more powerful microprocessors--computer chips that serve as a computer’s brain--to run the Windows applications.

Carrera’s board is based on RISC microprocessor technology, a faster method of computing known as reduced instruction set computing. The technology was developed by Silicon Graphics Inc. in San Jose. The boards, which are manufactured under subcontract by a company in San Diego, sell for $4,995 apiece, Faust said.