Scor­pio News

were they ? Well, I think that Gemini were actually trying to keep that a secret from the visitors !

What I mean by that is that nothing had a label on it to say what it was. For example, on one stand there were 3 Gemini,“ODIN” frame systems, all looking downright identical. A bit of investigation (i.e. asking a stand representative) revealed that they were all 80-BUS systems, one with the 64180 CPU board, one with the Z280 CPU board, and one with the 80286 CPU board (all prototypes, by the way). Floppy based ODIN systems start at £1795, 20MB Winchester ones at £2550. There was also a wall display showing most of the available 80-BUS boards.

On another stand they had a unit that looked like a Gemini Challenger (their 68000 based system), but in fact it was a prototype of their new AT-compatible, as briefly described by Dave Hunt in the last issue of Scorpio News. Complete monochrome systems start at £2470, up to 140MB colour systems at £4080. On the same stand there was a genuine Gemini Challenger, this one running SimTac, a program for training Air Traffic Controllers. This hardware/​software bundle can be yours from a mere £25000.

Yet another stand had a number of terminals and an Atari-ST, all hooked to a 68020 based system running the Mirage Operating System. You were supposed to believe that they were connected to a system containing Gemini’s new 68020 board, but this. wasn’t actually available in time for the show and so there was a certain amount of cheating taking place. The price of the 68020 board ranges from £1985 to £5870, depending on RAM and FPU options.

The DX-3 system had a stand of its own. DX-3 is the latest in the Gemini Multi-Format series of systems, DX standing for Data eXchange. This has been described in Scorpio News in the past. DX-3 prices are no longer published for some reason.

A further stand was dedicated to the GM879 Falcon graphics board. This is a largely Pluto-compatible board. However, it uses the Hitachi 63484 ACRTC, and has on-board genlock and B/W & RGB frame grabber. It also has an in-built SCSI port, meaning that Winchester drives can be attached (via a suitable controller) to give extremely fast picture load and save times. Falcon prices range from £1650 to £5065.

On the final stand there was a group representing an INMOS distributor. They were there to “plug” the Transputer, because Gemini are now into those. This is a project in which they are collaborating with Glasgow University in order to produce a number of Transputer based products. These start with an IBM PC style plug-in board with a Transputer and 4 Mbytes of ram at £3385 (COMPEC price – see later for an update). Then there are various different triple-Eurocard boards that may be used together. Quoting from a Gemini data sheet: