Old Computer Companies

From: Ed Tillman <ETILLMAN_at_satx.rr.com>
Date: Sun Feb 2 06:45:00 2003

Actually, DEC is still somewhat around -- it was absorbed into Compaq in
1997, and, of course, Compaq was absorbed into HP last year. As such, HP
now holds all the rights and histories to everything DEC and Compaq.
DEC/Compaq provided contract on-site tech support to my current and past two
retail firms. HP provides those services now, with the same (if older) DEC
and Compaq field techs. I still work with many of them in my current tech
support position.

I don't know about DG at all, but Honeywell still makes peripherals,
including digital cameras, for modern systems. Honeywell's done cameras,
through its photographic division, since at least 1959, in association with
the Japanese firms Petri and (later) Pentax. They also had flirting
relationships with Vivitar and Minolta. I still love my ancient
Honeywell/Pentax 35mm and it's Vivitar lens collection.

And, while we're asking, does anyone know what happened to Burroughs? As I
left the Air Force in 1991, I was working with a cantankerous, already
jurassic, cobbled-together system produced by "Convergent Technologies --
an abortive fusion of Burroughs and NCR. It's "banded" 512K memory board
nearly neasured a square foot by 1.5" thick, and was banded to *prevent* it
from accessing a full 1Mb of memory.

And further... Where did DataPoint go? I remember it was absorbed by some
other firm, but don't remember by whom. As I remember though, they made a
nearly indestructable external modem, back in the 12-2400bps days...

Cheers!

Ed
San Antonio, Tx, USA

From: "Hans B Pufal" <hansp_at_aconit.org>

> vance_at_neurotica.com wrote:
> > I'm trying to think of all the really old computer companies that are
> > still in business. GE and Honeywell no longer make computers. DEC and
DG
> > are gone. So there's HP, IBM, Bull... are there any others left from
> > way-back-when? Oh yeah, there's Siemens. And Amdahl's part of Fujitsu
> > now. Do they still count? I guess Fujitsu probably counts on its own
> > merits. Hitachi and Toshiba left the industry recently, after many
years.
> > And then there's Unisys, with their recent turn to weird hybrid systems.
> > Did I miss anyone?
>
> Fujitsu certainly counts, the earliest Fujitsu computer on my CCC list
> is the FACOM-100 dated 1954
>
> NEC has been around since the early days, the NEAC 1101 dates from 1958
> and the currently most powerful machine is the NEC Earth Simulator.
>
> By comparison, HP is a mere stripling, I list its first computer as the
> 2116-A in 1966.
>
> Then there is Cray, recently revived but still in business.
>
> -- hbp
Received on Sun Feb 02 2003 - 06:45:00 GMT