1986: February - Compaq Computer introduces the Compaq Portable II.1983: December - Compaq Computer makes its first public stock offering, raising US$67 million.1983: October - Compaq Computer introduces the Portable Plus.1983: March - Compaq Computer begins shipping the Compaq Portable PC.1982: November - Compaq Computer introduces the Compaq Portable PC.Texas Instruments who were unhappy with how TI was running its computer businessĪnd they thought they could do a better job. 1982: February - Compaq Computer Corporation is founded by Rod Canion, Jim Harris,Īnd Bill Murto, all former senior managers of.History of the Compaq Computer Corporation On January of 1983, BYTE magazine published a review of the Compaq Portable computer. In 1987, Compaq released the Portable III.Īn even smaller portable, the Portable III has a faster CPU and an attractive flat panel.With an internal hard drive and a 80286 microprocessor. In 1986, Compaq released the Portable II.In 1983, Compaq released the Portable Plus, which adds an internal hard drive to the Compaq Portable computer.Compaq Computer reports third year revenues of US$503.9 million, a U.S.Compaq Computer reports second year revenues of US$329 million, an industry record.$111 million in its first year, a record in American business.īecause of the Compaq Portable, and subsequent systems released: Result: The machine was very successful for Compaq and the company took in revenues of It can easily be taken aboard an airliner as carry-on luggage. More than a mere IBM clone, the Compaq Portable is something different, it's transportable, designed so Systems engineering department on their toes for years. The figure was a moving target, keeping a No one in Compaq ever declared that the BIOS was 100% compatible. Incompatibilities were ever attributed to this section of the BIOS, but hours were spent in trying to find Compaq never found out why IBM's code was so much bigger, and no He produced what appeared to be a fully compatible set of routines, but was told by someone that his code Was determined by a process known as "black boxing", which involved treating the BIOS as a black box and feedingĮvery possible input to it and recording the output.įor example, the keyboard driver was written by Steve Flannigan who had written the code for Silent 700 terminalsĪt TI. Dirty programmers were banned from working on the BIOS, but could work onįunctionality of the IBM BIOS was not determined by looking at IBM code - this was banned. Programmers who had read the BIOS were knownĪs dirty and others were known as clean. This was always ascertained in interviews by somewhat cunning means. It is true that Compaq had programmers who had seen the IBM BIOS listings, and many who had not. I have frequently read the story of how Compaq supposedly created a 100% compatible BIOS, but this is not reallyĬorrect. They had a legal BIOS identical in operationĪs an old Compaq employee, it was interesting to read the sections on Compaq computers, but I have a couple of The second group took these notes, and wrote their own BIOS that performed exactly the same.Īfter one year and a million dollars, they were successfull. One group analyzed the original code and made notes of exactly how it responded. Problem: Compaq couldn't just copy IBM's BIOS to make their new machine guaranteed IBM compatible, this would be Why make an IBM clone?īecause the IBM PC was extremely popular, and taken very seriously by businesses looking The Compaq Portable was the first 100% compatible IBM computer clone. Software being developed then for the IBM PC. Paper place mat in a Houston pie shop, the first product was a portable personal computer able to run all of the Senior managers who left Texas Instruments and invested $1,000 each to form their own company. Compaq Computer Corporation was founded in February 1982 by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto, three
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