Redwood City, CA Ð Although it has not yet announced any deals with hardware vendors, NeXT has started publishing lists of supported '486 configurations from specific vendors in preparation this month for the developers' beta of NeXTSTEP for Intel.
Meanwhile, prices of '486 systems continue to drop. "The number of supported configurations is growing daily and by our May 25 release, there will be a much larger number of systems to choose from," said Bob Lawton, NeXT-STEP for Intel program manager.
NeXTSTEP '486 requires an Intel '486 processor, including the '486SX, though the '486DX, '486SL, and '486DX/2 chips are recommended for better performance. Intel's Pentium will also be supported. A minimum 8MB of RAM for grayscale and 16MB for color systems is required. Users need at least a 120MB IDE or SCSI hard disk, while developers will require at least 330MB of storage, with more memory required for DOS or Windows partitions running on the same disk. Several Ethernet and token ring cards will be supported for networking.
Several VGA and Super VGA subsystems will be supported for grayscale machines, while color machines will require graphics subsystems, such as Intel JAWS, Chips and Technologies Wingine, and certain Local Bus and VL-Bus graphics. Available VRAM will determine how much screen real estate is available: Resolutions can range from 640 by 480 pixels on notebooks to 800 by 600, 1024 by 768, and 1120 by 832 pixels on larger machines.
Configurations will range from about $2500 for a basic monochrome model to $7000 or more for a color machine.
On the desktop, supported '486 systems include various models from Compaq, Dell, Epson, Gateway, Intel, Goldstar, NEC, AST, and Hewlett-Packard. AC portables to be supported include models from Compaq, Toshiba and NEC. Support for notebooks from Toshiba, NEC, Compaq, and Altima is planned. Announcements are expected from NCR, Zenith, and Data General.