News from Sustaining Members

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 11

“Sustaining Membership” of the British APL Association is available to any company trading in APL products or services. It provides a tangible way for such companies to express their commitment to APL and to promote increased interest and activity in APL and in the Association.

As well as receiving public acknowledgement for their sponsorship of the Association, Sustaining Members receive bulk copies of VECTOR for distribution amongst their customers and are offered the opportunity to submit news material for this section of the Journal. They are also able to submit announcements for Association meetings (subject to the approval of the Activities Officer) and are invited to inform APL users of their products via seminars and articles. I am always surprised how much time I have to spend persuading them to contribute!

The Committee of the British APL Association would like to acknowledge the generous support of the following organisations that have become Association Sustaining Members.

APL People Limited¶

With H Walton Technical Systems well established, APL People’s new project for 1986 is to start up ‘APL Tran-Plan’ – a company through which to develop their consultancy skills in the field of transportation planning. They already have some exciting projects in the pipe-line for APL Tran-Plan, such as the planning of car-parks in Chicago and of railways all over the world – North America, Pakistan and even Botswana. Having been within a hair’s breadth of winning the contract to design Bangkok harbour, they at least have the consolation that they’re not all fighting over who goes out there!

Meanwhile, they are continuing to build on their solid consultancy base, taking on more permanent staff and having more freelancers joining the ranks to cope with the increasing flow of work in 1986. They continue to offer their placement and advisory services to those contemplating a change of job or simply wanting some unbiased but informed opinions about career options in 1986.

Dyadic Systems Limited¶

Dyadic Systems have just announced the implementation of Dyalog APL for the new IBM 6150/51 computers. The 6150/51 range (known as the IBM PC RT in the United States) is based upon a true 32 bit Risc (reduced instruction set) processor rated at 2 MIPS, and runs AIX, a Unix System V operating system. The machines, which will be generally available in May, come in either desktop or floor-standing units, and support up to 8 users. A complete system including Dyalog APL starts from around £15,000.

Dyalog APL for the IBM 6150/51 places no practical restrictions on APL object size or on workspace size. Performance is meant to be impressive, even on the pre-production models which Dyadic has tested.

Dyalog APL supports the full APL character set on the system console, which may be the current IBM 5151 PC display, the 5154 PC enhanced colour display, or one of the 3 new all-points addressable graphics displays. Additional users are supported by connecting standard ASCII terminals (or other PCs) to RS232 ports, and Dyadic will configure systems using the new Lynwood j300 and j500 APL/graphics terminals.

Dyadic will provide interfaces between Dyalog APL and IBM supported software packages for the system. These include the IBM SQL/6150 Data Base system and the IBM 6150/51 Professional Graphics Series. Interfaces for other third party software such as RS/1, UNIRAS, Applix, and the IMSL Fortran libraries are also planned.

MetaTechnics Systems Limited¶

MetaTechnics Systems announce new versions of MetaScreen and MetaScreen2. The new versions are fully compatible with release 5 of STSC’s APL*PLUS/PC. They provide greater integration with the APL keyboard and contain several new features.

MetaTechnics have released their IEEE-488 (G.P.I.B) interface package. This is a set of utility functions, many written in assembler, which enable communication from an APL application program to laboratory instruments, process control equipment and other peripherals such as plotters. The package runs with the IEEE-488 interface card supplied by Tecmar but can be adapted to work with other interface cards.

MetaTechnics Systems Ltd can supply the NEC uPD70108 microprocessor chip at £15. This chip is a plug-in replacement for the 8088 processor fitted to the IBM PC (and compatibles) and can increase the speed by between 15% and 35% when running APL* PLUS/PC.

MicroAPL Limited¶

MicroAPL’s new marketing department is making plans to expose what it calls the best kept secret in the computer world – APL. Gerard Paul-Clark, their marketing manager says “Now that APL is available on high-volume 68000-based machines (i.e. QL, Atari, Amiga, Mac.), we feel it is our duty to take advantage of this new mass audience. APL is a development tool that once seen is immediately addictive but the barriers to newcomers are the weird symbols and the equally weird APL community.”

MicroAPL is planning to get this mass audience to try APL with the keyword version of APL.68000, which they are calling Liberty. Currently in its final ‘product engineering’ stage, it will be launched in the near future amidst a fanfare of advertising in the popular micro magazines. Prices will start from £99.95 including VAT for either Liberty or the symbolic version.

On the hardware front, MicroAPL announced the Aurora supermicro back in December. This is the successor to the Spectrum and is a modular system that MicroAPL claims is “designed by experts to be designed by you”. The Aurora starts off with 1-16 users for the first processor board and as boards are added, so can more users be accommodated. The 68020 processor used is so powerful that the Aurora is claimed to perform at least 4 times faster than the straight 68000. David Eastwood, MicroAPL’s Systems Division director, comments: “The Aurora is such a solid system that we are coming down off our APL perch and aiming to include the general market, there being many other languages available (FORTRAN, BASIC, Pascal, C ).”

For the time being, MicroAPL will continue to sell to its prestigious customer base but Eastwood says “selling through what have become known as value added resellers is not beyond the realms of possibility”.