Tenon Intersystems : Press Release

MachTen: A Full Featured UNIX For The Powerbook Now Available

Santa Barbara, CA, July 8, 1992. Tenon Intersystems is shipping a new version of MachTen - Unix software for the Macintosh. MachTen, Release 2.0, runs on every Macintosh, from the PowerBooks to the Quadras.

MachTen turns Macintosh hardware into a family of System 7-savvy Unix workstations. Bringing the power of Unix to low cost Macintosh hardware results in as much as an order of magnitude cost reduction in client/server computing.

MachTen is Berkeley 4.3BSD Unix, built on a Carnegie Mellon Mach foundation - not a Unix "work-alike" or derivative, but licensed AT&T software. MachTen extends the existing Macintosh software, rather than replacing it. With MachTen there is no need to partition your disk, add new device drivers, or disturb any existing Macintosh operations. MachTen allows you to continue to run off-the-shelf Macintosh programs while simultaneously running Unix programs. In addition, MachTen enhances the Macintosh Operating System with true Unix multitasking, full internet communications, and a distributed file system via NFS.

MachTen, Release 2.0, supports Balloon Help and the core Apple Events. A new MachTen Control Panel provides a Macintosh-style configuration tool for TenonUs Unix. The panel can be used to prioritize the scheduling between Macintosh and Unix processes, set the number of available buffers for Unix data caching, enable IP forwarding, and reconfigure the network and reassign network servers. New Rdesktop NFSS software lets Macintosh applications access NFS mounted volumes.

"MachTen, by virtue of the connectivity inherent in Unix, turns every Macintosh into an open system", said Steve Holmgren, President and Founder of Tenon. "With MachTen your Macintosh becomes a peer with every TCP-based entity on your network." In January, MachTen received an Honorable Mention "Eddy" award from MacUser magazine for Best Connectivity Software 1991.

TenonUs MachTen Development System adds a powerful software development capability to Tenon's Unix for the Macintosh. Included in the package are the basic GNU C compiler and C preprocessor, the Motorola 68000 assembler, a loader, a symbol table utility, load module tools (ar and ranlib), a software management tool (make), a set of Tenon compiler libraries, a set of Unix libraries, a language checker and beautifier (lint and indent), lex and yacc. Among the libraries included are a MachTen Unix system call library, the curses library, NFS library support, termcap library support, and a math library that provides an interface to AppleUs Standard Apple Numerics Environment(tm).

Companion software packages provide X client and X server software that runs in conjunction with MachTen. With Tenon's X software your Macintosh can be an X terminal, as well as a Unix workstation and Macintosh application platform.

Tenon Intersystems, founded in 1989, is dedicated to integrating client and server workstation system software with "point and click" personal computer software and affordable personal computer hardware. With Tenon's distributed system software, PCs will "point and click" directly onto the rest of the computer industry.