U.S. Navy specialists needed an advanced video switch in their project to reduce the number of instruments that military air traffic controllers must manage, by consolidating information and control functions. They found their solution in the MasterConsole keyboard/video/mouse switch from Raritan Computers Inc. of Somerset, N.J.
Officials of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center-Charleston (SPAWARSYSCEN) in Charleston, S.C., are using the Raritan MasterConsole on their Video Information Distribution System - better known as VIDS - which will be deployed initially on every major U.S. Navy/Marine Corps radar and tower air traffic control (ATC) facility. U.S. Defense Department officials plan to designate VIDS as a DOD common ATC system and will deploy it subsequently at all DOD ATC facilities.
"After careful evaluation of several competitors` products for functionality, reliability, and customer support, Raritan`s MasterConsole line best met our objectives of enabling the Navy to move forward in deployment efforts," says Brian Legg, VIDS engineer at SPAWARSYSCEN.
MasterConsole enables designers to locate all operator positions remotely from the control computers. This reduces the need for equipment at each operator position. The system has an on-screen interface through which a controller can select control from two to 256 computers using only one keyboard, monitor, and mouse. It works with any combination of computers, such as PCs, Macintoshes, or Sun, Digital Alpha, RS6000, HP9000, or Silicon Graphics workstations. - J.K.
For more information on MasterConsole, contact Raritan by phone at 732-764-8886, by fax at 732-429-8090, by post at 400 Cottontail Lane, Somerset, N.J., 08873, or on the World Wide Web at http://www.raritan.com/.
