System Industries

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System Industries, Inc., [1] [2] [3] was an American computer hardware company active from 1968 to 1993. It produced printers and disk drives for minicomputers. [4]

Contents

History

The firm was founded in 1968 [1] by Ed Zschau [4] with backing from Brentwood Associates, a private equity firm. [5] Corporate earnings were followed by The New York Times . [6] [7] Their focus was to be a third-party provider of DEC-compatible equipment, especially for printers and disk drives (and their controllers). [8]

In 1992 they acquired Emulex's disk drive business. [9] By 1993 System Industries was dealing with a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. [10] That same year they introduced an eraseable optical disc product and an 8mm magnetic tape storage devices. [11]

System Industries was one of 19 manufacturers of disk drive products that were sued in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Digital Equipment Corporation for alleged patent violations. [12] Individual settlements were reached. [13]

Silonics

System Industries had a subsidiary named Silonics, [14] [15] which made ink-jet printers. [16] [17] By 1980, [14] System Industries found it more profitable to focus on its disk business. [18]

SIMACS (SImultaneous Machine ACceSs)

System Industries developed a capability for having more than one DEC CPU, but not at the same time, have write access to a shared disk. They implemented an enhancement called SIMACS (SImultaneous Machine ACceSs), [19] [20] which allowed their special disk controller to set a semaphore flag for disk access, allowing multiple WRITES to the same files; the disk is shared by multiple DEC systems. SIMACS existed on VAX and PDP-11 RSTS systems.

Advertising

It's "80 Mbytes of storage for under $12K!" ad was considered noteworthy by Computerworld , which in 2007, 2012 and 2017 headlined "... And other ad favorites," "... And other IT ad favorites," and "10 fun tech ads through the years." [21] [22] [23] A CIO magazine "looking-back" item also noted the aforementioned ad headline.

References

  1. 1 2 Leonard Sloane (February 18, 1982). "System Industries Names New Chief". The New York Times .
  2. ↑ Dean Takahashi (February 15, 1994). "MTI Technology to Sell Stock to Public". The Los Angeles Times .
  3. ↑ "Company Reports ** SYSTEM INDUSTRIES INC (O)". The New York Times . April 26, 1983.
  4. 1 2 "New System Industries Chief". The New York Times . February 18, 1987.
  5. ↑ Zschau, "rhymes with how" Daniel F. Cuff; Lawrence M. Fisher (January 21, 1987). "A Son Of Silicon Valley Back From Capitol Hill". The New York Times .
  6. ↑ "SYSTEM INDUSTRIES INC reports earnings for Qtr to July 4". The New York Times . July 22, 1982.
  7. ↑ "System Industries reports earnings for Qtr to April 22". The New York Times . May 23, 1989.
  8. ↑ Andrew Pollack (February 27, 1983). "The Birth of Silicon Statesmanship". The New York Times . System Industries, a computer data storage equipment manufacturer
  9. ↑ Dean Takahashi (June 23, 1992). "Emulex to Sell Competitor Its Storage Products Line : Electronics: A Milpitas firm will buy the line, which is compatible with Digital computers". The Los Angeles Times .
  10. ↑ John O'Dell (October 18, 1993). "MTI to Buy Troubled Data Storage Maker : Technology: Deal for Anaheim firm brings with it a $100-million supply subcontract from Boeing". The Los Angeles Times .
  11. ↑ "System Industries Has Optical Jukebox, 8mm Tape System For DEC's DSSI". March 5, 1992.
  12. ↑ Dean Takahashi (October 9, 1991). "Emulex Corp. Files Countersuit Against Digital : Competition: The Costa Mesadisk drive maker claims that Massachusetts rival sued it only as an attempt to monopolize the computer storage market". The Los Angeles Times .
  13. ↑ "Digital Takes On Emulex Alleging Infringement". The Los Angeles Times . August 14, 1991.
  14. 1 2 "Company News". The New York Times . August 3, 1979. Tally .. to purchase .. Silonics Inc. owned by System Industries
  15. ↑ "Capital Formation: Hearings". 1978. p. 42. Silonics .. subsidiary of System Industries
  16. ↑ Roger Bourke White. "Systems Industries".
  17. ↑ "US6412925B1 - Ink jet apparatus".
  18. ↑ Victor F. Zonana (June 29, 1986). "Zschau as a Manager Gets Mixed Reviews". The Los Angeles Times .
  19. ↑ R. Wand; M. Kesteven; P. Rayner (February 24, 1984). "Computing Requirements for AT Software Development" (PDF).
  20. ↑ Prem Joshi; Jacques Delacroix (September 1984). "New Flexibility For Multiple VAX/VMS". HARDCOPY . pp. 64–68.
  21. ↑ "80 Mbytes of storage for under $12K! And other ad favorites". Computerworld . June 14, 2007.
  22. ↑ "'80 Mbytes of storage for under $12K!' and other IT ad favorites". Computerworld . October 22, 2012. prices were valid only for resellers buying at least 40
  23. ↑ "10 fun tech ads through the years". Computerworld . April 7, 2017.
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