New Products

Ellen M. Dahl

Issue #75, July 2000

RAIDpod, iBrow, Eon—The Anything Box and more.

RAIDpod

LAND-5 Corporation introduced their RAIDpod drop-in compact storage solution, designed to instantly add SCSI RAID disk array storage for any server enclosure. The RAIDpod holds up to three hot-swappable disk drives, supports all levels of RAID and offers up to 109GB of native storage. Up to five RAIDpods can be daisy-chained together to provide 546GB of storage capacity. The high-performance RAIDpod includes a powerful Wide Ultra2 backplane, offering transfer rates of up to 80MB/second, selectable on-board termination and backward compatibility with single-ended SCSI.

Contact: LAND-5, 9747 Business Park Ave., San Diego, CA 92131, 888-226-6544 (toll-free), 858-566-3611 (fax), http://www.land-5.com/.

iBrow

Merinta, Inc. announced details about the flexibility and customizability of the iBrow Solution, its end-to-end software platform that powers media-rich Internet Appliances (IAs). The iBrow software platform is Netscape 4.6.1-compliant and offers several benefits and areas of flexibility, such as multiple CPU chip set architectures; multiple operating systems, including Linux 2.2, a robust Java architecture and software backplane; and a unique remote management feature, providing corporate customers with the option to have Merinta remotely update and modify the content on devices deployed worldwide. The iBrow Solution is hardware- and OS-independent.

Contact: Merinta, Inc., 9430 Research Blvd., Suite 200, Austin, TX 78759, 512-349-5800, 512-346-7062 (fax), info@merinta.com, http://www.merinta.com/.

Eon—The Anything Box

Neoware Systems, Inc. introduced Eon—The Anything Box, a customizable Linux information appliance designed specifically for business-to-business applications. It can be tailored for a variety of B2B applications and configurations including web kiosks, routers, firewalls, cash registers, thin clients, e-mail stations and security devices. Eon—The Anything Box is bundled with Neoware's new NeoLinux OS: a small, secure, centrally managed version of Red Hat Linux designed specifically for information appliances. It can be configured with software and add-in hardware for a wide variety of environments including wireless applications, as a network box or a point-of-sale station.

Contact: Neoware Systems, Inc., 800-636-9273, info@neoware.com, http://www.neoware.com/.

ATX35 E-Disk

BiTMICRO Networks unveiled the world's fastest EIDE solid-state flash disk, the ATX35 E-Disk. It is supported on a wide variety of platforms including Linux. The ATX35 has an average access time of 0.10 ms and 16.6MBps burst read and write transfer rates. Available in industry-standard 3.5-inch form factor, the ATX35 is fully ATA-2, ATA-3 and ATA-4 compatible and is available with up to 18,944MB of capacity. All E-Disks offer the highest levels of data integrity available on flash storage with their advanced Reed-Solomon Error Detection and Correction, which protects customers' data and file systems against corruption.

Contact: BiTMICRO Networks, Inc., 48499 Milmont Dr., Fremont, CA 94538, 510-623-2341, 510-623-2342 (fax), info@bitmicro.com, http://www.bitmicro.com/.

LONE-TAR version 3.2.3.1

Lone Star Software Corp. announced a new release of its LONE-TAR backup product. Among the major enhancements in v3.2.3.1 are several bug fixes, support for long file names, improved RAW Partition support, hot binary restore, improved handling of error recovery when restoring from a pipe, and the -zSYMLINK_ADJ flag option, which can rename symbolic links on the fly while restoring, so they are all relative to a given directory. Available platforms include Linux.

Contact: Lone Star Software Corp., 509 East Ridgeville Blvd., Mount Airy, MD 21771, 800-525-8649, 301-829-1623 (fax), sales@cactus.com, http://www.LONE-TAR.com/.

Mortgage Builder through Linux

MBSI announced a new platform for its loan origination system, Mortgage Builder through Linux. The Linux port gives mortgage brokers, bankers and credit unions a low-maintenance server that is fast and stable. Mortgage Builder was created with a new generation of computer application software tools called System Builder by Informix Software. It provides users with a post-relational 3-D database that allows up to 1,000 users to operate on a variety of platforms.

Contact: Mortgage Builder Software, Inc., 24370 Northwestern Hwy., Suite 310, Southfield, MI 48075, 248-208-6142 (fax), http://www.mortgagebuilder.com/.

RAID Controllers

ICP vortex began shipping 32-Bit PCI-wide/Ultra2 SCSI RAID controllers, offering higher performance levels for low-end controllers. The ICP GDT6118RS, GDT6128RS, GDT6518RS, GDT6528RS and GDT6538RS models offer one, two or three Ultra2 channels and support data transfer rates of 80MB/sec per channel, with up to 15 devices attached to each channel on cables up to 12 meters in length. The GDT-RS series controllers feature the fully integrated i960 RS processor from Intel running at 100MHz and an SDRAM interface. The controllers are PCI 2.2-compliant with full bus mastering capabilities. All ICP controllers support Linux, are I2O ready and fulfill all standards for CE and FCC.

Contact: ICP vortex Corporation, 4001 E. Broadway, B-20, Phoenix, AZ 85040, 602-414-0414, 602-414-0444 (fax), sales@icp-vortex.com, http://www.icp-vortex.com/.

Red Hat Linux 6.2 and eCos 1.3

Red Hat, Inc. introduced its complete open-source family of operating systems for e-commerce servers and Internet-enabled, hand-held and embedded devices. Version 6.2 is the latest edition of the Red Hat Linux distribution. eCos (embedded configurable operating system) 1.3 is the latest version of Red Hat's application-specific OS for embedded systems. The configurability of eCos 1.3 enables developers to create an embedded device, and it features a built-in TCP/IP stack that enables embedded devices to communicate with the Internet. In addition to the Professional Edition, Red Hat Linux 6.2 is also available in a standard and a deluxe edition.

Contact: Red Hat, Inc., ecos-info@redhat.com, http://www.redhat.com/services/ecos/.

smartNIC Linux Driver

smartBridges announced the release of its Linux software driver for the smartNIC USB networking adapter. The smartNIC adapter directly connects the hot-plug feature of the USB port into the Ethernet network, allowing the system to bring up networking support on the fly. The driver also automatically updates the network configuration, making the system network-enabled and ready to use. The adapter draws its power from the USB port itself. For mobile computer users, the adapter functions like a conventional PCMCIA network card. For desktop computer users, it functions like a conventional PCI networking card.

Contact: smartBridges Pte. Ltd., 21 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, KRDL Bldg., Singapore 119613, Singapore, +65-773-9230, +65-774-1282 (fax), info@smartbridges.com, www.smartbridges.com/smartNIC/smartnic.html.

SuSE Linux version 6.4

SuSE announced the newest version of SuSE Linux. Features of version 6.4 include easier installation with enhancement to SuSE's graphical installation tool, YaST2; expanded and simplified hardware detection and configuration; a quick-start beginner's manual; support for memory to 3.5GB; SuSE Proxy Suite, SuSE's open source firewall tool and FTP proxy; and a journaling Reiser file system.

Contact: SuSE GmbH, Schanzaeckerstr. 10, D-90443 Nurnberg, Germany, +49-911-740-53-31, +49-911-741-77-55, suse@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/.

uClinux System Builder Kit

Rt-Control announced a new release of the uClinux system builder kit, version 2.0.38.1-pre5. The kit adds support for the ARM7TDMI and i960 microprocessors, providing multiple platform support for deeply embedded microprocessors. uClinux is a Linux-based distribution targeted at microprocessors that do not support memory management units (MMU). The latest uClinux system builder kit CD-ROM is available at the uClinux web site, https://www.uclinux.com/orderdesk.

Contact: Rt-Control Inc., 195 The West Mall Suite 608, Toronto, ON M9C 5K1, Canada, 416-241-2708, 416-243-1173 (fax), info@rt-control.com, http://www.rt-control.com/.

SuperAuk DSL MultiServer 6.1

WholeLinux, Inc. released its debut product, the SuperAuk DSL MultiServer 6.1. The full-blown network appliance software installs automatically in four minutes on almost any PC, and is the first desktop-based administration scheme allowing push-button maintenance of firewall, mail, web and file shares for local networks of Windows and Macintoshs. A Windows machine can become a secure DSL server which ties together Windows, Macintosh and Linux boxes on a local network, running Linux applications while the DSL server runs in the background. An HTML Wizard allows graphical network setup. The resulting SuperAuk desktop will also function as a standard Linux workstation.

Contact: WholeLinux, Inc., 2610 Chanticleer Ave., Santa Cruz, CA 95065, 831-462-4881, info@wholelinux.com, http://www.wholelinux.com/.

WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux

Corel Corporation began shipping its WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux, a comprehensive office productivity suite. Both the Standard and Deluxe Editions include the download version of Corel LINUX OS, featuring an updated 2.2.14 kernel and X-server 3.3.6, new control panels for hardware management and USB support, improved hardware support during the automatic install, preliminary RPM support in Corel Update, more hardware drivers for video and sound, and improved Windows connectivity in the File Manager. Both editions install on major Linux distributions and are compatible with the Windows version of WordPerfect Office 2000 and Microsoft Office 2000.

Contact: Corel Linux, 800-772-6735, 561-733-6033 (fax), custserv2@corel.com, http://linux.corel.com/.

Diffpack Datafilter Toolbox 1.0

Numerical Objects AS announced their Diffpack Datafilter Toolbox 1.0. This plug-in module to the Diffpack Multi-Physics Simulation Framework provides easy and safe import facilities for third-party finite element meshes. The Datafilter Toolbox can be used either as a stand-alone file-to-file converter or as a linkable library facilitating direct mesh import into customers' Diffpack applications. The Diffpack product line is available on Red Hat Linux 6.0/6.1 and other platforms.

Contact: Numerical Objects AS, Forskningsveien 1, P.O. Box 124 Blindern, N-0314 Oslo, Norway, +47-22-06-73-00, +47-22-06-73-50 (fax), sales@nobjects.com, http://www.nobjects.com/.

Linux-Mandrake Secure Server 7.0

Macmillan USA, partnering with InformIT, announced Secure Server 7.0, a secure web server built within the new Linux-Mandrake 7.0 distribution. Secure Server 7.0 provides graphical tools for easy installation. The Apache-based web server utilizes RSA's BSAFE SSL-C technology for encryption and security. Secure Server 7.0 is designed for Linux professional web server administrators responsible for managing an e-commerce site, intranet or any web site requiring security.

Contact: InformIT, 800-716-0044, orders@informit.com, http://www.informit.com/linux/.