Founder | Ed Lippert II, Breck Ricketts |
---|---|
Defunct | 1986 |
Fate | Closed due to declining sales. |
Headquarters | Wichita, Kansas , US |
Products | computer peripherals |
CARDCO was a computer peripheral company during the 1980s in Wichita, Kansas, United States. CARDCO was well known in the Commodore 64 and VIC-20 community because of advertisements in numerous issues of Compute! magazine and availability of their products at large retailers, such as Target. [1]
CARDCO was founded by Ed J. Lippert II (President / Management) and Breck Ricketts (Vice President / Engineering). It went out of business in 1986 because of the decline in sales of C64 computers.
In 1986, they formed a new company called C-Ltd that manufactured peripherals for Amiga computers, and it eventually went out of business in 1989 as the Amiga computer sales declined.
Computers Anonymous was a spin-off company ran by Cardco owners wife Betsy Lippert & Cherie Hovaidar-Safid, which repaired devices made and sold by CARDCO.
There were severe shortcomings of early Commodore printers, so CARDCO created the Card Print A (C/?A) printer interface that emulated Commodore printers by converting the Commodore serial interface to a Centronics parallel printer interface to allow numerous 3rd-party printers to be connected to a Commodore 64 or VIC-20. [2]
A second model, a version that supported printer graphics was released called the Card Print +G (C/?+G), supported printing Commodore graphic characters using Epson ESC/P escape codes.
CARDCO released additional enhancements, including a model with RS-232 serial output, and shipped over two million total printer interfaces.
Common compatible printers were manufactured by Epson, Panasonic, Okidata, Star Micronics, and C. Itoh.
GWIZ - Computer Interface between a Commodore 64 and a non Commodore printer such as a (Silver Reed Printer, Gorilla Printer, Etc.)
Unlike most other systems, Commodore computers could only use specialized cassette players, known as "Commodore Datasettes", to save data. CARDCO made an adaptor to work with normal cassette players.
CARDCO made a numpad that plugged into both of the joystick ports on the Commodore 64.
The Commodore 1541 is a floppy disk drive which was made by Commodore International for the Commodore 64 (C64), Commodore's most popular home computer. The best-known floppy disk drive for the C64, the 1541 is a single-sided 170-kilobyte drive for 5¼" disks. The 1541 directly followed the Commodore 1540.
The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International. It has been listed in the Guinness World Records as the highest-selling single computer model of all time, with independent estimates placing the number sold between 12.5 and 17 million units. Volume production started in early 1982, marketing in August for US$595. Preceded by the VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 took its name from its 64 kilobytes(65,536 bytes) of RAM. With support for multicolor sprites and a custom chip for waveform generation, the C64 could create superior visuals and audio compared to systems without such custom hardware.
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The VIC-20 is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET. The VIC-20 was the first computer of any description to sell one million units. It was described as "one of the first anti-spectatorial, non-esoteric computers by design...no longer relegated to hobbyist/enthusiasts or those with money, the computer Commodore developed was the computer of the future."
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The Commodore 1530 (C2N) Datasette, later also Datassette, is Commodore's dedicated magnetic tape data storage device. Using compact cassettes as the storage medium, it provides inexpensive storage to Commodore's 8-bit home/personal computers, notably the PET, VIC-20, and C64. A physically similar model, Commodore 1531, was made for the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 series computers.
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This article is about the various external peripherals of the Commodore 64 home computer. Due to the backwards compatibility of the Commodore 128, most peripherals will work on that system, as well. There's some compatibility with the VIC-20 and PET too.
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The Epson PX-4 is a portable CP/M based computer introduced in 1985. The screen was 40×8 characters physical, but 80×25 or 40×50 virtual, making it almost compatible with the Epson PX-8 Geneva. It could be operated from a Nickel-Cadium battery pack, 4xAA batteries, or a 6V 600mA DC power supply.
Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user. These computers were a distinct market segment that typically cost much less than business, scientific or engineering-oriented computers of the time such as those running CP/M or the IBM PC, and were generally less powerful in terms of memory and expandability. However, a home computer often had better graphics and sound than contemporary business computers. Their most common uses were playing video games, but they were also regularly used for word processing and programming.
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