 | |
| Founded | 1994 |
|---|---|
| Defunct | 2005 |
| Fate | Acquired by General Dynamics |
| Headquarters | Cupertino , United States |
| Products | Laptops, servers, workstations |
| Website | www.tadpolecomputer.com |
Tadpole Computer was a manufacturer of rugged, military specification, UNIX workstations, thin client laptops and lightweight servers.
Tadpole was founded in 1994 [1] and originally based in Cambridge, England, then for a time in Cupertino, California. [2]
In 1998, Tadpole acquired RDI Computer Corporation of Carlsbad, California, [3] who produced the competing Britelite and Powerlite portable SPARC-based systems, for $6 million. [4]
Tadpole was later acquired by defense contractor General Dynamics, in April 2005. [5]
Production continued until March 2013 but since then, they no longer sell any systems; and support for their products is provided by Flextronics.
An anonymous US intelligence officer had stated to Reuters in 2013 that a decade earlier the US secretly created a company reselling laptops from Tadpole Computer to Asian governments. The reseller added secret software that allowed intelligence analysts to access the machines remotely. [6]
Tadpole laptops used a variety of architectures, such as SPARC, Alpha, PowerPC and x86. [1] Although very expensive, these classic Tadpoles won favour as a method to show corporation's proprietary software (IBM/HP/DEC) on a self-contained portable device on a client site in the days before remote connectivity.[ citation needed ]
The original SPARCbook 1 [7] was introduced in 1992 with 8–32 MB RAM and a 25 MHz processor. [8] [9] It was followed by several further SPARCbooks, UltraSPARCbooks (branded as Ultrabooks) – and the Voyager IIi. [10] [11] These all ran the SunOS or Solaris operating systems. [12] [13] [14] [15] In 2004, Tadpole released the Viper laptop. [16]
The SPARCLE was based on a 500-600 MHz UltraSPARC IIe or 1 GHz UltraSPARC IIIi. [17]
An Alpha-based laptop, the ALPHAbook 1, was announced on 4 December 1995 and became available in 1996. The Alphabook 1 was manufactured in Cambridge, England. It used an Alpha 21066A microprocessor specified for a maximum clock frequency of 233 MHz. The laptop used the OpenVMS operating system. [18] [19]
A PowerPC-based laptop was also produced – the IBM RISC System/6000 N40 Notebook Workstation, powered by a 50 MHz PowerPC 601 and with between 16 and 64MB RAM – and designed to run IBM AIX. [20] [21]
Tadpole also produced a range of x86-based notebook computers, including the Tadpole P1000, and the TALIN laptops with SUSE Linux, or optionally Microsoft Windows. [22]
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