 | |
| Industry | Computer hardware |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1976 |
| Founders | Carole Ely Lore Harp [1] [2] [3] |
| Fate | Dissolved 1987 |
| Headquarters | , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products | Desktop computers |
Vector Graphic, Inc., was an early microcomputer company founded in 1976, the same year as Apple Computer, during the pre-IBM PC era, along with the NorthStar Horizon, IMSAI, and MITS Altair.
The first product was a memory card for the S-100 bus. A full microcomputer using the Z80 microprocessor, the Vector 1, [4] was introduced in 1977. There were several Vector Graphic models produced. The Vector 1+ had a floppy disk drive. [4] The Vector Graphic 3 had a fixed keyboard housed anchoring a combined screen terminal and CPU case. The Vector Graphic 4 was a transitional 8-bit and 16-bit hybrid model.
Although primarily used with the CP/M operating system, the Vector 3 ran several others including OASIS, Micropolis Disk Operating System (MDOS), and Micropolis Z80 Operating System (MZOS).
Early Vector Graphic models used the Micropolis floppy disk controller and Micropolis floppy disk drives. Later models were designed with the integrated floppy drive-hard drive controller and used Tandon floppy drives.
Almost all used unusual 100-track per inch 5 ¼-inch floppy drives and 16-sector hard sector media. Some models included 8-inch floppy drives and hard disk drives.
Vector Graphic sales peaked in 1982, by which time the company was publicly traded, at $36 million. It faltered soon after due to several factors. The introduction of the IBM PC in August 1981 shifted the market and smaller players lost momentum. The Vector 4 was accidentally pre-announced in April 1982, the same month that founder and chief hardware designer Robert Harp left the company after a dispute with co-founder (and wife) Lore Harp over control of the company.
The early announcement of the Vector 4, which had a separate keyboard tethered to the computer (as opposed to a combined keyboard and terminal) resulted in a sharp decrease in sales of the Vector 3 as customers delayed purchases up to six months until the new product was available.
In addition, the company had decided to use the CP/M operating system in the Vector 4, which they considered a superior operating system than MDOS; management recognized the nature of their gamble, as IBM would move the market in a different direction if it elected to use the DOS operating system for their competing product, the IBM 8080. The gamble did not pay off, and by the end of 1984 Lore Harp was gone and venture capital investors took over.
By summer 1985, only three dozen employees remained, down from a peak of 425 workers in 1982. Ultimately, the Vector Graphic headquarters and assembly factory, across from a 17-person company (Amgen) and next to the 101 freeway, was converted into a Home Depot store. [5] Chapter 11 bankruptcy followed in December 1985. [6] A sought-for merger partner was not found and chapter 7 liquidation of remaining assets resulted in October 1987. [7]
Vector Graphic computers had many innovations, such as the Flashwriter integrated video and keyboard controller. Vector Graphic was known for their Memorite word processing application. When combined with the Flashwriter, the Vector Graphic Memorite software gave low-cost[ clarification needed ] word processing capability, which had previously only been available with dedicated word processors.
As of 2007 [update] , Vector Graphic still had a small but active user community.
The Aster CT-80 is a 1982 personal computer developed by the small Dutch company MCP, was sold in its first incarnation as a kit for hobbyists. Later it was sold ready to use. It consisted of several Eurocard PCB's with DIN 41612 connectors, and a backplane all based on a 19-inch rack configuration. It was the first commercially available Dutch personal/home computer. The Aster computer could use the software written for the popular Tandy TRS-80 computer while fixing many of the problems of that computer, but it could also run CP/M software, with a large amount of free memory Transient Program Area, (TPA) and a full 80×25 display, and it could be used as a Videotext terminal. Although the Aster was a clone of the TRS-80 Model I it was in fact more compatible with the TRS-80 Model III and ran all the software of these systems including games. It also had a built-in speaker which was compatible with such games software.
A disk operating system (DOS) is a computer operating system that resides on and can use a disk storage device, such as a floppy disk, hard disk drive, or optical disc. A disk operating system provides a file system for organizing, reading, and writing files on the storage disk, and a means for loading and running programs stored on that disk. Strictly speaking, this definition does not include any other functionality, so it does not apply to more complex OSes, such as Microsoft Windows, and is more appropriately used only for older generations of operating systems.
The IBM Personal Computer is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team of engineers and designers at International Business Machines (IBM), directed by William C. Lowe and Philip Don Estridge in Boca Raton, Florida.
The Xerox 820 Information Processor is an 8-bit desktop computer sold by Xerox in the early 1980s. The computer runs under the CP/M operating system and uses floppy disk drives for mass storage. The microprocessor board is a licensed variant of the Big Board computer.
Kaypro Corporation was an American home and personal computer manufacturer based in Solana Beach in the 1980s. The company was founded by Non-Linear Systems (NLS) to compete with the popular Osborne 1 portable microcomputer. Kaypro produced a line of rugged, "luggable" CP/M-based computers sold with an extensive software bundle which supplanted its competitors and quickly became one of the top-selling personal computer lines of the early 1980s.
In computer science, group coded recording or group code recording (GCR) refers to several distinct but related encoding methods for representing data on magnetic media. The first, used in 6250 bpi magnetic tape since 1973, is an error-correcting code combined with a run-length limited (RLL) encoding scheme, belonging into the group of modulation codes. The others are different mainframe hard disk as well as floppy disk encoding methods used in some microcomputers until the late 1980s. GCR is a modified form of a NRZI code, but necessarily with a higher transition density.
The Tandy 2000 is a personal computer introduced by Radio Shack in September 1983 based on the 8 MHz Intel 80186 microprocessor running MS-DOS. By comparison, the IBM PC XT used the older 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor, and the IBM PC/AT would later use the newer 6 MHz Intel 80286. Due to the 16-bit data bus and more efficient instruction decoding of the 80186, the Tandy 2000 ran significantly faster than other PC compatibles, and slightly faster than the PC AT. The Tandy 2000 was the company's first computer built around an Intel x86 series microprocessor; previous models used the Zilog Z80 and Motorola 6809 CPUs.
Micropolis Corporation was a disk drive company located in Chatsworth, California and founded in 1976. Micropolis initially manufactured high capacity hard-sectored 5.25-inch floppy drives and controllers, later manufacturing hard drives using SCSI and ESDI interfaces.
The Rainbow 100 is a microcomputer introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1982. This desktop unit had a monitor similar to the VT220 and a dual-CPU box with both 4 MHz Zilog Z80 and 4.81 MHz Intel 8088 CPUs. The Rainbow 100 was a triple-use machine: VT100 mode, 8-bit CP/M mode, and CP/M-86 or MS-DOS mode using the 8088. It ultimately failed to in the marketplace which became dominated by the simpler IBM PC and its clones which established the industry standard as compatibility with CP/M became less important than IBM PC compatibility. Writer David Ahl called it a disastrous foray into the personal computer market. The Rainbow was launched along with the similarly packaged DEC Professional and DECmate II which were also not successful. The failure of DEC to gain a significant foothold in the high-volume PC market would be the beginning of the end of the computer hardware industry in New England, as nearly all computer companies located there were focused on minicomputers for large organizations, from DEC to Data General, Wang, Prime, Computervision, Honeywell, and Symbolics Inc.
A floppy-disk controller (FDC) is a hardware component that directs and controls reading from and writing to a computer's floppy disk drive (FDD). It has evolved from a discrete set of components on one or more circuit boards to a special-purpose integrated circuit or a component thereof. An FDC is responsible for reading data presented from the host computer and converting it to the drive's on-disk format using one of a number of encoding schemes, like FM encoding or MFM encoding, and reading those formats and returning it to its original binary values.
The Z-89 is a personal computer introduced in 1979 by Heathkit, but produced primarily by Zenith Data Systems (ZDS) in the early 1980s. It combined an updated version of the Heathkit H8 microcomputer and H19 terminal in a new case that also provided room for a built-in floppy disk on the right side of the display. Based on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor it is capable of running CP/M as well as Heathkit's own HDOS.
DECmate was the name of a series of PDP-8-compatible computers produced by the Digital Equipment Corporation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. All of the models used an Intersil 6100 or Harris 6120 microprocessor which emulated the 12-bit DEC PDP-8 CPU. They were text-only and used the OS/78 or OS/278 operating systems, which were extensions of OS/8 for the PDP-8. Aimed at the word processing market, they typically ran the WPS-8 word-processing program. Later models optionally had Intel 8080 or Z80 microprocessors which allowed them to run CP/M. The range was a development of the VT78 which was introduced in July 1977.
George Morrow was part of the early microcomputer industry in the United States. Morrow promoted and improved the S-100 bus used in many early microcomputers. Called "one of the microcomputer industry's iconoclasts" by Richard Dalton in the Whole Earth Software Catalog, Morrow ran his own computer business, Thinker Toys, Inc., later Morrow Designs. He was also a member of the Homebrew Computer Club.
The Wave Mate Bullet was a Z80 single-board computer from 1982 which used the CP/M operating system. It was sold in Australia, the United States and Europe and was apparently popular in academic settings.
The history of laptops describes the efforts, begun in the 1970s, to build small, portable Personal Computers that combine the components, inputs, outputs and capabilities of a Desktop Computer in a small chassis.
The TRS-80 Model II is a computer system launched by Tandy in October 1979, and targeted at the small-business market. It is not an upgrade of the original TRS-80 Model I, but a new system.
PolyMorphic Systems was a manufacturer of microcomputer boards and systems based on the S-100 bus. Their products included the Poly-88 and the System 8813. The company was incorporated in California in 1976 as Interactive Products Corporation d/b/a PolyMorphic Systems. It was initially based in Goleta, then Santa Barbara, California.
The Dimension 68000 is a microcomputer introduced by the Micro Craft Corporation in 1983 that sought to emulate the Apple II, the IBM PC, and various CP/M-centric computers through a family of coprocessor expansion cards and emulation software. The Dimension 68000 can also run as a standalone computer based on the Motorola 68000 from which it gets its namesake. The computer is mostly the brainchild of Mike Carpenter, a former executive of a scientific instrument manufacturer who incorporated Micro Craft in Dallas, Texas, to develop the Dimension 68000. It had a market lifespan of three years and received mixed, mostly positive, reception from the technology press. Criticism was leveled at the $6,250 price tag for the computer with the full deck of coprocessor cards, as well as the extent of the emulation power of those cards.
Jonos International, Inc., originally Jonos, Ltd. (JL), later Netcom Research, Inc., was an American computer company active from 1980 to 1992. The company sold a variety of computer hardware products and systems, including STD Bus peripherals, smart terminals, microcomputers, and portable computers. The company's Courier portable computer was the first microcomputer sold with Sony's then-new 3.5-inch floppy disk drives on its release in June 1982. Jonos' systems were widely used in the fields of construction, roadworks, machining, and military.
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