Missing computer company's

[garry1p]

A lot of members were in IT so I thought this might interest some.

Major computer company's gone out of the computer business or bought out since I started maintaining computer equipment.

Unisys, Sperry Rand, Burroughs, Telex, RCA, NCR, CDC, DEC, Wang, Memorex, National Semiconductor,.....Who else?

 

[ultrarunner]

For many their first computer was Radio Shack…

 

[FullMetalBucket]

Remember Prodigy? Used them back in the day.

 

[WM75Guy]

IBM sold their computer manufacturing division to Lenovo in 2005. We used Lenovo when I worked at the hospital and I use Lenovo computers at home, currently have 3 desktops and 2 laptops in operation, plus several old ones as spares.

 

[riptides]

A lot of members were in IT so I thought this might interest some.

Major computer company's gone out of the computer business or bought out since I started maintaining computer equipment.

Unisys, Sperry Rand, Burroughs, Telex, RCA, NCR, CDC, DEC, Wang, Memorex, National Semiconductor,.....Who else?

Gateway, Compaq, Xerox.

 

[Oaktree]

Nashua Corp. Made the disc packs for CDC and most other drives of that era (70s/80s). Pioneered a lot of the coating techniques used in spinning drives even today. Worked there for a few years in the 80s.

 

[TheGoose]

A lot of members were in IT so I thought this might interest some.

Major computer company's gone out of the computer business or bought out since I started maintaining computer equipment.

Unisys, Sperry Rand, Burroughs, Telex, RCA, NCR, CDC, DEC, Wang, Memorex, National Semiconductor,.....Who else?

Digital Computer has to be near the top of that list. They did some stuff back in the 70's/80's that the general public didn't have access to for 20 years. Our old manufacturing plant still runs off a digital Alpha station, very stable and fast even today.

The other one that comes to mind is Commodore Computer with the very popular 80's computer the Commodore 64, and then the Commodore Amiga. Both excellent machines in their time.

 

[part-time-Farmer-NC]

Tandy. My first computer was a TI94a. Had the tape recorder attached to write programs. This was great opportunity for me to learn I DON'T want to be a programmer... Hated that and SQL programming. I like network/server "stuff".

 

[TheGoose]

I just realized you did list Digital in the original post, DEC or Digital Equipment Corporation.

Another one that was really good was Sun Microsystems. We used their workstations in the 90's. Much further ahead of anything for personal use.

Don't forget Silicon Graphics.

 

[LittleBill21]

no mention of Packard Bell? Boo.. my first computer or Gateway?

 

[LittleBill21]

I just realized you did list Digital in the original post, DEC or Digital Equipment Corporation.

Another one that was really good was Sun Microsystems. We used their workstations in the 90's. Much further ahead of anything for personal use.

Don't forget Silicon Graphics.

Sun Micro is still around, so is Unysis in a different form factor.

 

[riptides]

Digital Computer has to be near the top of that list. They did some stuff back in the 70's/80's that the general public didn't have access to for 20 years. Our old manufacturing plant still runs off a digital Alpha station, very stable and fast even today.

The other one that comes to mind is Commodore Computer with the very popular 80's computer the Commodore 64, and then the Commodore Amiga. Both excellent machines in their time.

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I was a DECie. Then Compaq bought us out...then HP. Same job...same customers...different t-Shirt.

 

[kenmbz]

coleco,SWTPC, Digital Research, Osborne. Kaypro

about a hundred unix variants like Coherent

Even languages like Forth, Intel RTOS etc.
But Cobal and fortran still seem to hang around.

 

[riptides]

True story....

Called in by a major Global Bank, seems the network was having issues to Asia. Tracked probable cause to a Data Center in NJ.

Went to Data Center, looking for issue. Was leaning on a small computer called a microVAX looking at network diagrams. Person says not to lean on computer. I respond why, what is it doing?

They don't know. Been there for a decade. Just running. LOL. So we hack into it, turns out it was feeding downloads to routers for over 10 years, steady.... The machine had so much uptime, the System Monitoring display instead of numbers and stats had a great majority of them with asterisks. We switched it off since the network was moving to another protocol - TCP/IP. That little machine made some history back then. Uninterrupted, continuous hands off service for over a decade.....

Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)

 

[oosik]

I will never forget the year when we got Wang. We ( Env Health Dept ) were chosen by Wang to test their new systems. The secretaries were overjoyed. They could edit/correct any correspondence - right on the monitor. Once in final state - the printers would print out as many copies as needed. Then a link was established between our offices and the main government headquarters.

Wang designed a quite complex ( at the time ) program to do on-site water well and septic system calculations and designs. With help - homeowners could enter their data and see the results.

We had entered the Seventh Heaven.

A permit for a standard septic system - three bdrm house - went from around $384 to $16. Water well permits went from $25 to $5. These were the days of the Alaska pipeline oil profits. We were rolling in $$$$$. Life was good.

 

[Hughman]

CDC cyber systems with their 60 bit single precision was almost as accurate as double precision on most other main frames.

 

[bmaverick]

Before the PC and smaller than a mainframe systems came to be,

Prime Computer​

Prime Computer - Wikipedia

Used by so many companies for 3D legacy CAD back in the day. Ford Motor Co was the #1 user along with Aerospace and Marine.

Not IBM OS nor Unix nor Linux nor PLC nor Assembly, the OS was PR1MOS 12-bit.

The initial offerings by Prime were clones of Honeywell's DDP 316 and 516 minicomputers. Main competitors were Digital Equipment Corporation, Data General and Hewlett-Packard.[1] As of June 1975 time-sharing was Prime's largest end-user market, and 25% of revenue was from OEM.

Popular Softwares running on it were,
MEDUSA CAD system
PRIMEDesign
CADDS4 from Computervision
PDGS CAD CDC
CADAM
CATIA
Pro Engineer
Calma CAD systems

Before the internet or BBS systems, people could send messages around the world on the network of PRIME computers, before MIME even existed, PDN Mail was able to perform the same functions and was used to send software updates as well as all sorts of attachments between systems. Decades before Al Gore invented the internet or Bill Gates had Windoze. LOL

Many of the vintage yet futuristic computer systems in the original Dr. Who shows were Prime computers.

Some people think that the 1980s was a huge tech explosion. Well they are right to a degree, but it's Prime Computers that made it all happen in the 70s before hand.

 

[kenmbz]

I remember Prime, Silicon Graphics and Apollo (bought by HP).
I also worked on some LISP machines, now that was a pain, had to convert from LISP to C.

Most of my work though was on PIC controllers.
Could do a lot with built in RAM and a ROM (which needed a UV eraser for EEPROM).
And 8751 with built in EPROM-now that was a step up from 12-14 chips so 2 or 3.

We had an old Box SUN 386 which I converted to SPARC.
I had to replace the CPU board and all the memory boards and upgrade the power supply and fans.
When that was done and it booted I went out for drinks, was the main machine to manipulate Gov images for recon flights and satellites at the time.

 

[riptides]

...
When that was done and it booted I went out for drinks, was the main machine to manipulate Gov images for recon flights and satellites at the time.

I worked in NASA communications for a while. They had a photo lab on the same floor. I was fortunate enough to get a lot of Kodak prints from various landmarks around the world.

I was also fortunate enough to be in communications for ground control and flight control for various spacecraft and even the first two Space Shuttle flights.

The entire computer support systems were all DEC VAXen and DECsystems for the satellite ground segments we flew.

 

[NHBX]

Eagle computer