Spectra Announces New FDDI Technology
Speed of Light Networking Now Available

Alpharetta, Georgia -- June 19, 1995-- Spectra Systems announces shipment
of the affordable PowerLink PCI FDDI Card today, and is demonstrating the
product at PC Expo, June 20th-22nd in New York City. PowerLink PCI is a
new Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) Peripheral Component
Interconnect(PCI) card, designed specifically for Apple's new Power
Macintosh 9500 which incorporates the industry standard PCI bus.

The network interface card (or NIC) is a short 6.88 inch form factor that
ensures easy installation into existing and future PCI-based computers.
PowerLink PCI is available in either Single- or Dual-Attached Station (SAS
and DAS respectively) connection. DAS may be used in small networks,
though Spectra suggests their affordable fiber-to-the-desktop RingMaster
Concentrator for business installations.

Spectra views the Power Macintosh 9500 PCI system as one of the best
computing platforms to come from Apple Computer. "We've designed
accelerator cards for Macintosh since 1988, and there's just not room for
much improvement in the new Power Mac computers. Apple's pretty much got
the CPU performance covered. We want to help make sure that the networked
Power Mac gets all the performance it can out of the network", said Rod
Frazer, Spectra System's Chief Hardware Designer.

"We are pleased that Spectra Systems is supporting Apple with their next
generation PCI FDDI card", said Howard Lee, Senior Vice President, Apple's
Macintosh System Division. "New product announcements from major
developers like Spectra Systems clearly reflect the strong support for the
Power Macintosh platform, and specifically will benefit customers, as they
will have a wide range of PCI products for use in their Power Macs."

In addition to the PowerLink PCI adapter, Spectra Systems also released the
first Power PC native version of Ditto, Spectra's lightning fast
file-transfer utility. Ditto is used by Kodak, MTV, and other major
companies to move large amounts of data through their networks at a much
faster rate than Appleshare allows. Ditto in combination with FDDI is the
fastest way to move data between computers, but requires no additional
hardware in Macs with built-in Ethernet. A Ditto transfer over FDDI can
sustain over 6MBytes/second between Power Macintosh 9500 systems, and
Ditto can average about 1 MByte/second over standard Ethernet, depending
on system configuration. Ditto uses no data compression techniques.

Spectra Systems Corporation is located in the North Metro Atlanta
Technology Loop, and has been providing network support to Fortune 500
companies for three years, with concentration on promoting FDDI as the
"fiber-to-the-desktop" solution. Spectra has worked with a number of
publishing companies worldwide to convert Ethernet and "Fast" Ethernet
installations to high performance FDDI.

Spectra's World Wide Web (WWW) site URL is http://www.spectra.atlanta.com.
This site has technical information, links to associated FDDI WWW sites,
and an FTP site for downloading updates or demos. Email is:
info@spectra.atlanta.com or sales@spectra.atlanta.com.

Retail list pricing is expected to be $695 for a PowerLink SAS Category 5
Copper Interface, and $795 for SAS Fiber PowerLinks, and is available now.
Spectra Systems has been shipping Nubus FDDI SAS cards for three years,
and also offers the RingMaster Concentrator and fiber optic cabling.
Spectra Systems products are available from Spectra directly, or through
selected resellers. Contact Spectra Systems for reseller and distribution
information.

Spectra Systems Corp
2001 Westside Pkwy, Ste 125
Alpharetta, GA 30201
404-410-7803,  fax 404-410-7815
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Additonal Technical Information:

FDDI is the price/performance leader in networking architectures, and is
widely held to be the most reliable and secure network available. Single
Mode Fiber drivers can be used to extend the network runs up to 24 miles
for interconnecting campuses and regional offices, as well as government
buildings, etc.

FDDI has a 4500 byte maximum packet size, as compared to only 1500 bytes
for standard Ethernet (or 100BaseT), and only 608 bytes for Appletalk.
FDDI never has collisions, and in either Category 5 copper or the high
reliability Fiber Optic form can support far more users with a lot less
hardware, and much less management.

Optical fiber based networks can be used to connect users up to 1.25 miles
from a hub using multimode fiber, and FDDI is recommended by many phone
companies to connect buildings within a metropolitan area using "dark
fiber", which is fiber installed by the local telephone company, but as
yet unused. Spectra supplies single-mode interfaces in their RingMaster
Concentrator, and on the PowerLink PCI and Nubus NICs to accommodate these
applications.

Networking products that use Apple's new Open Transport System will benefit
from PowerLink because the new Apple Program Interface will allow sections
of the old Appletalk Protocol stack to be replaced by custom
implementations. This will allow the system to make full use of the FDDI
protocol features with their regular applications that follow the Open
Transport rules.

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