Vintage Computing

here is the four web browsers i have installed in os/2 running side by side on their default homepage

IBM WebExplorer (its a local saved copy of the ibm website from 1996, webexplorer has problems with most websites)

Netscape Navigator 4 (live internet archive version of it’s old home page)

Lynx 2.8.9

A friend of mine just posted this to Facebook:

HOLY FUCKING SHIT!! LOOK WHAT I JUST GOT AT THE THRIFT STORE!!!!!!

(If you don’t know what this is, it’s the Intellivision Keyboard upgrade. Only 4,000 were made, and most were recalled. In other words it’s rare AF. I don’t think a sealed one has even been sold before: might go for $5k-$10k)

The Megaprocessor

The Megaprocessor is a micro-processor built large. Very large.

How? Like all modern processors the Megaprocessor is built from transistors. It’s just that instead of using teeny-weeny ones integrated on a silicon chip it uses discrete individual ones like those below. Thousands of them. And loads of LEDs.

P-CAD by Personal CAD Systems, Inc

P-CAD was the brand name created by Personal CAD Systems, Inc., a company founded in 1982 in Los Gatos, California, by Richard Nedbal (CEO) and Roy Prasad (VP of Engineering). Both were former executives of American Microsystems, Inc. (AMI), a custom semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California. Also, part of the founding team were Gregory Houston, VP Marketing, a former Calma executive, and Chi-Song Horng, Director of software engineering (later promoted as a Vice President), a former AMI software engineering manager.

P-CAD was a play on personal computers, which were just becoming popular, following the launch of the IBM PC. The vision of the company was to disrupt the existing hegemony of $250,000 CAD systems based on mainframe computers and custom workstations, and make electronic CAD available to the masses at a cost under $10,000.

The startup originally raised US$500,000 from CrossPoint Venture Partners, and US$3,000,000 in a second round from New Enterprise Associates and Robertson, Coleman and Stephens. The board of directors included John Mumford (Crosspoint), Dick Kramlich (NEA) and Sy Kaufman (Robertson, et al.).

P-CAD went on to become the company with the biggest installed base of users of Electronic Design Automation (EDA), with over 10,000 users by 1988. At that time, P-CAD was the most prolific EDA company as measured by its user base, easily surpassing established CAD companies such as Autotrol, Calma, Intergraph, Daisy, Mentor, Cadnetix, CAE Systems, ECAD, SDA Systems, etc. At that time, Cadence was just being formed with the merger of ECAD and SGA, and Synopsys was being founded as a new start up.

P-CAD’s flagship products included schematic capture, logic simulation and PCB layout. Its single biggest customer was Texas Instruments. Other customers included most of the top electronic companies in the U.S., Europe and Japan. P-CAD also signed up IBM as a distribution partner, especially for Japan. Some of the key later additions to the P-CAD team who were instrumental in building up the company include former IBM and Xerox executive Jim Dick, former Apollo Computer VP, Mike Lack, former Apollo Computer Western Regional Sales Manager, Arthur Clark, and EDA industry veteran Ellis Smith, who managed P-CAD’s Asia business. Key engineering managers included Bob Dean, Bill Newhard, Howard Schutzman, Alvin Hung, Felix Ruslim, Ron Rinaldi and Mark Houde. Key marketing/sales managers included Kirk Shorte, Steve Meyer, Bruce Fihe, Kathy Eggiman, Elizabeth Dessuge, Ken Lowe, Susan Scal, Donna Licot, Shahriar Emami, and John Roth, who as Director of Sales, was instrumental in bringing the first $5 million of sales into the company.

In 1990, P-CAD was acquired by Cadam, which was a subsidiary of IBM, but was in the process of being sold to Lockheed. At the time of acquisition, P-CAD had an installed base of over 100,000 end users, a record at that time. In those days, such a large user base was unheard of in the EDA industry.

A few years later, the P-CAD group was divested by selling to Accel Technologies, an EDA software corporation from San Diego, California, which was acquired by Altium (then Protel International Pty. Ltd.) in 2000. The P-CAD product included schematic capture, component library management, PCB layout and routing, parametric constraint solver and auto-routing capability.

White PCB on an older Sapphire motherboard [1024x836]