RMB PLANS FOR SERIES 400 & MC68040

There have been many questions and suggestions about the RMB/WS  and
RMB/UX products in regards to the  Motorola 68040 processor and the
Series 400 family of engineering workstations.

MSO would like to take this opportunity to explain some time-critical
portions of our plans.

The following is the current status and future plans for RMB with
respect to the MC68040 and the Series 400 products:

1. RMB/WS and RMB/UX will be revised to support the 68040-based Series
   300 products in Q2'91.  We expect this to coincide with the
   availability of 68040 products.

2. RMB/WS will not be supported on the Series 400 engineering
   workstations.  This is a large effort and MSO has decided to apply
   those resources to a "Portable RMB" which can address multiple
   hardware platforms in the future.

3. RMB/UX 5.52 (the current revision) supports the following:

+--------------------+-----------------------------------------------+
| pn                 | description                                   |
+====================+===============================================+
| A2001A             | Model 400t VRX Color Bundle                   |
| A2021A option #AL0 |Model 400s VRX Color Bundle                    |
|                    |                         (DIO expander option) |
+--------------------+-----------------------------------------------+

In addition to the above systems, the following MC68040 Series 300/400
products will be supported (when available) in conjunction with HP-UX
release 7.05.
     1. Series 300 MC68040 products (including model 375 upgrades)
     2. Series 400 MC68040 model 4xxt and model 4xxs Color VRX products

4. Due to your inputs, effort is underway to support some additional
   Series 400 products with RMB/UX.  A future release of RMB/UX,
   targeted for Q2'91, will support more Series 400 products which
   include the 68040 processor and additional display subsystems.

These are the most relevant details and there is a great deal of RMB
activity at MSO.  In fact, staffing on the RMB family is at its highest
level in several years and we at MSO are excited about its future.  And
in FY'91 we also plan to introduce significant enhancements to HP
BASIC.

Regards,
Len Gilmore