, . , . , . , - , , 90- . — Acorn Olivetti.

Acorn

Acorn Computers is an English computer manufacturer that is remembered for its Acorn Electron, BBC Micro and Acorn Archimedes models. Founded in 1978, the company in the late 80s and early 90s was as popular in England as Apple in the United States. The BBC Micro computer earned special consumer love: from 1981 to 1994, over 1.5 million units sold them, and at the peak of their popularity, BBC Micro occupied 75% of the home PC market. The fierce competition from Atari and Commodore, and closer to the mid-90s - from the manufacturers of IBM PC-compatible computers forced the company to come up with new products. And in April 1994, the Risc PC series of computers was launched, which reached our country.

These were high-performance computers with a modular structure, high configuration capabilities, support for installing a second processor (including Intel 80486, which made it possible to ensure compatibility with IBM PC). But for some reason, instead of developing the lineup, the company took up ambitious, but failed projects. Acorn begins to produce set-top boxes for cable television (to provide the “video on demand” service), “network computers” (thin clients for home and educational institutions), and also tried to arrange the release of the “interactive electronic newspaper” NewsPad, which in general resembles modern tablets .

In the 1990s, all this was simply unclaimed, which led to great financial difficulties. Launched in 1996, the new Acorn Phoebe computer (named after Phoebe from the Friends series) could help the company get back on its feet, but a miracle did not happen. In September 1998, the company management closed the project, laid off 90 employees responsible for it, canceled the Acorn World Show 98, which was supposed to host the Phoebe presentation, and left the market. In 2000, the company, which was trying to enter the set-top box market, was taken over by the telecommunications giant Broadcom.

Acorn phoebe

Amiga

The family of home personal computers and operating systems developed by Amiga Corporation is familiar to almost every computer enthusiast. Computer development began in 1982, when a team of engineers led by Jay Miner left Atari in search of a more pleasant working atmosphere. They founded their own business - the company Hi-Toro, then renamed Amiga - and took up their own game console, codenamed Lorraine.

On July 23, 1985, the first Amiga 1000 was demonstrated in New York. By this time, the development company was Atari's financial hostage and was acquired by Commodore International. The Amiga 1000 used the Motorola 68000 processor at 7.16 MHz, 256 KB of RAM and was equipped with a drive to read 880-kilobyte floppy disks. The computer was able to display 4096 colors, play 8-bit melodies. The AmigaOS OS offered the convenient Workbench user interface and the Intuition window system. In 1990, the Amiga 3000 was released, which did not have a built-in keyboard. She walked as an additional element. A computer for its time was expensive, but extremely sophisticated. It was equipped with a special flicker unit responsible for suppressing the annoying pulsation of a low-budget VGA monitor sweep.

In early 1992, the company rolled out the Amiga 500+, a slightly modified and cheaper version of the original computer. That's just on the Amiga 500+ did not start some key games of that time. Customers were upset and carried the computer back to the store. The farewell chord of the company was the Amiga CD32 game console with the ability to work with CD-ROMs. The game console unexpectedly “fell into the yard”, crushing half the European gaming market. Inspired by the success, the developers managed to push the console into the Canadian market, anticipating a triumphal march across the vastness of the United States of America, but the demand for new personal computers was so-so. Despite the good sales of the game console, the profit was critically low. Commodore went bankrupt in 1994 and stopped worrying about the fate of Amiga computers.

Amiga

Completely live machine from ASh_XX

Amiga3000

Amstrad (schneider)

Another company from England, founded in 1968. In 1984, Amstrad CPC began to produce home computers, trying to take part of the market from Commodore and Sinclair. And partly it was possible, in 1986 Amstrad bought the rights to the entire line of Sinclair computers. In the late 1980s, Amstrad was a significant player in the UK personal computer market. Amstrad series (in Germany, Austria and Switzerland - Schneider) PC2000 was launched in 1989. But due to problems with Seagate ST277R hard drives installed in the PC2386 model, they had to be recalled to replace the controller with Western Digital. Because of this, Amstrad lost its leading position in the European personal computer market and tried to enter the gaming console market.

In 1993, Amstrad bought a license from Sega and released the Amstrad Mega PC, a system reminiscent of Sega TeraDrive, in order to maintain its presence in the gaming market; but this time, the attempt is unsuccessful, mainly due to the high initial price of £ 599. In the same year, Amstrad launched the PenPad, and entered the market a few weeks earlier than Apple Newton, but this also turns out to be a failure, due to several technical problems and an inconvenient interface. After several unsuccessful attempts to make a profit, in 1997 Amstrad was liquidated. Interestingly, in 1993 a Russian company from Omsk created Aleste 520EX, a clone compatible with the 1990 Amstrad CPC6128. The clone had the ability to switch the device to MSX mode .

Amstrad PC1640

. , , .

Apricot

Apricot Computers is an English manufacturer of business computers, originally called Applied Computer Techniques (ACT). The development of the first computers (ACT Sirius 1 came out in 1981) was carried out at its own factory in the Scottish city of Glenrothes, then referred to as the "British Silicon Valley" - Silicon Glen. At the same time, almost 100% of ACT Sirius components were produced locally. Only the central processor purchased from Intel was imported. The company also tried to produce laptops (in 1984, Apricot Portable came out with a 3.5-drive and the ability to add a hard drive). The "chip" of the company was its own design and technical developments. Largely due to this, in the early 1990s they made one of the safest x86-based PCs in the world, which was sold exclusively to the UK government.

In the 90s, Apricot Computers were known for their Apricot Xen workstation or Apricot VX FT Server computer.- The world's first server solution based on the Intel 80486 microprocessor, using an uninterruptible power supply integrated into the chassis. In the 90s, Appricot PCs were found throughout the former USSR. For example, it was he who became the first foreign computer in Chisinau at the Department of Electronic Device Design. These machines were equipped with a system unit with a monitor of about 12 '' (visible working area of the screen), an external hard drive (connected separately to the system unit and an outlet, of course), a keyboard with an unusual LCD mini-display and a trackball - a novelty in the input area graphic information. The operating system is DOS and Windows 3.11, and one of the most commonly used programs was Autocad.

In general, the quality of the "apricot" computers was really high. Their capabilities at that time not only greatly exceeded the functionality of most IBM PC-compatible machines, but could also seriously compete with Apple's superpopular computers in the USA. Apricot ruined the high cost of devices. The decision to transfer production capacities to the countries of Southeast Asia, taken by competitors, has long been ignored by the company to please British unions. And this greatly affected pricing policy. As a result, in the mid-nineties Apricot was bought by Mitsubishi Electric. The Japanese company tried to compete with NEC, which at that time had an unconditional monopoly in the manufacture of computers in the Japanese market. As a result, most of Apricot’s design refinements were “cut short” by effective Japanese managers.The range of manufactured computers under the Apricot brand has ceased to differ from hundreds of other Mitsubishi models. In June 1999, the Glenrothes factory ceased production, and in October 1999 the European Apricot-Mitsubishi enterprises were closed.

Brother

The company is known not only for scanners, printers, computer peripherals and sewing machines. In the mid-90s, Brother, in collaboration with IBM, launched the GeoBook series of laptops on the market. The GeoBook NB-60 , NB-80C, and PN-9100GR models used a modified version of the PEN / GEOS OS and offered the Yago user interface. The GeoBook series was marketed primarily for educational institutions and was part of the IBM Eduquest School View strategy. In 97-98 years in Russia you could see laptops of this manufacturer. White, neat, they looked pretty interesting. The most widely used model is the NB-60. Color screen (640x480 VGA), 1.44 Mb floppy disk drive, touchpad, mouse, modem - this animal, assembled in the USA, looked pretty good. It’s a pity that things didn’t go further.

Brother GeoBook s-l1600

Dex computer

I’m sorry, but I can’t say almost anything about this manufacturer. Never encountered. The network has rare and fragmentary data. For example, in 1996, an Italian school donated 2 computers, DeX 486 DX 2-66 and DEX 486 SX-33, which had a CD-ROM. A color monitor and speakers (there was an audio card in the computer) were also present. In general, computers of this brand appeared around 1993-94. If you have more information, or even photos, write in a personal.

DEX Magazine Review

DTK Computer

DTK (aka Gemlight Computer) was founded in 1981 in Taiwan. In 1988, DTK introduced its innovative Barebone system , which made DTK one of the world's largest manufacturers of Gemlight motherboards (in particular, P57IAA and P57SAX) and Barebone systems. The company worked closely with Intel, developing motherboards specifically for their processors. In the 90s, it released computers Keen-3304 and Keen-4000, which could be seen in Russia, but in general there were a dozen and a half models in the line. The company was last heard of in 2008 when it released the DTK BareBone Series DEFT-915GP.

Epson

Talking about Epson, it seems to me, makes no sense. I only note that in 1982 Epson released the world's first portable computer HX-20. It was the size of a sheet of A4 size, had a keyboard, screen and printer. The monochrome LCD displayed four lines of text with 20 characters each. And all this is more than a quarter century ago! One of Epson's most famous computers was the Apex 100, a 16-bit IBM PC compatible with the 8088-1 at 4.77 or 10 MHz. This beast had 640 KB of RAM and read large 360 KB floppy disks. Equity I, the first computer with an Intel 8088 processor and one or two 5.25-inch floppy disk drives, is also known. A little later, Equity 286 and Equity 386SX entered the market. Formally, these computers should not be on our list, since they came out around 86-89.But since we met these cars up to 93 years, they completely deserved their portion of applause.

Formoza

The company "Formosa" was founded on June 22, 1993, and began with the supply of components for assembling a PC: then this type of business was booming. The company's management set an ambitious goal - to bring Formosa to the leaders of the Russian market. Strong demand and competent pricing policy by the end of the year make Formosa a prominent player in the computer market. At first, 8 people worked on the staff, who produced 150-300 computers a month. But in 1994, serial production of computers began, and in 1996 for the first time in Russia a conveyor line for assembling and thermal testing of PCs was launched, a line for assembling memory modules was launched. Since August 1997, with the participation of a Lucky Star partner, Formosa factories have been producing motherboards, and since 1998, video adapters. Memory modules began to be released even earlier - in 1994.

In those years, component suppliers in Russia offered motherboards for more than three dozen Chinese manufacturers. The abundance of noname-boards, which cost $ 40-50 cheaper than similar products from ASUSTeK, Elit Group, GIGABYTE, MSI, opened Formosa the prospects for its own production of system, sound, graphics cards. Then it was economically viable and created a good image of the company as a manufacturer. In the mid-1990s, a similar situation developed in the monitor market: it was economically more expedient to transport components and assemble displays in Russia. But already in the early 2000s, world display manufacturers consolidated, they built effective distribution channels, and it turned out that it was cheaper to buy ready-made devices from our distributors than to import them from abroad,not to mention the components and assembly of monitors. This caused problems in the Formosa business, and the company (as well as its various daughters) slowly bent. It’s a pity, because Formosa offered a good assembly, so its computers were in demand.

Formosa

, , .

Global usa

GLOBAL USA was founded in 1984 in New York (USA). The initial business of the company was related to the advancement of computer technology, and also conducted business consultations for its clients, among which there were 500 companies from Wall Street in New York. In the future, the company developed its activities related to the export of personal computers and accessories to countries in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. At the end of 1988, when regulated retail prices were released in the Soviet Union and the country was open to a market economy, the company opened its branch in Moscow. The last store was opened in 1997, and in 2001 the company began the liquidation process. But I ran ahead, sorry.

The company appeared on the Russian market thanks to Imdad Heigu, a native of Bangladesh. The company was located in two small rooms, rented in one of the Moscow research institutes and produced computers with the Global USA label. To the section of pies and distribution of elephants I was a little late: much more powerful monsters have already distributed spheres of influence in the Russian market. And global computers were not very cheap, but they were notable for the quality notorious in the world of computer scientists. This was partly due to the fact that the assembly was declared as Asian, sometimes even as American, but computers were not assembled under the scorching sun in the shade of palm trees, but in the nearby basement by simple Russian guys. That is, the build quality "floated". The buyer could get a normal machine, and he could buy a constant headache.Devices with a blue and white icon were difficult to sell on the secondary market, since the label was tightly mounted in the case, and even if the inside of the computer was replaced, it was impossible to hide its origin. It is precisely because of their insecurity that Global USA computers have left virtually no trace in the hearts of computer enthusiasts of the time (well, perhaps scars).

Global USA

ICL (International Computers Ltd)

ICL was a large company from England specializing in computer hardware. It lasted from 1968 to 2002 (some subsidiaries still exist). The company's most successful product was the ICL 2900 Series mainframe series. In 1991, ICL acquired Nokia Data, part of the Finnish Nokia group. This gave the opportunity to manufacture computers and software for them, opened the market of Scandinavia. Therefore, ICL computers were manufactured in both Denmark and Finland. In Russia, one could see ICL ErgoPRO (Type C4 / 33) of Finnish production and even then the ancient ICL MPS-3000 Comet CP / M Microcomputer from the Danes. When the Fujitsu Siemens Computers joint venture appeared in 1999, it absorbed the entire ICL hardware business, and the company was renamed Fujitsu Services.

In 1991, the Soviet-British joint venture ICL-KPO VS was created by one of the largest computer manufacturers in the USSR, the Kazan Production Association of Computing Systems and ICL. The project involved the development, production, marketing and maintenance of ICL hardware and software, including microprocessors of the SPARC-RISC architecture, the UNIX 4.0 operating system, and DRS-6000 servers. In 1994, the company became a joint-stock company, in 1997 - a joint-stock company. And today it is a large organization that is among the ten largest companies in Russia in the field of information protection.

Fujitsu ICL ErgoPro 125v and Fujitsu ICL ErgoPro D5-60P

ErgoPro 125v

ErgoPro D5-60P

Inel professional

The history of Inel began in 1992, when a group of students at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology established Intellectronics, a computer assembly company. Later in 1993, CJSC Inel appeared on the basis of this company. Starting with a screwdriver assembly of personal computers, the company switched to a streamlined serial production of a wide range of products, creating an uninterrupted supply system of equipment and software of the largest manufacturers. And it took its deserved place in the segment of technology "for the people" - low-cost mass computers. Over time, Inel was divided into several companies: some were engaged in production, others in service, and others in sales. In the first five years of its success, the company opened seven branches throughout the country. The company staff has grown to 100 people.

In 1997, Inel acquired the rights to produce computers under its trademark from Excimer. This was the second case of a peaceful, civilized trademark transfer in the history of the Russian computer business. After that, Inel began to produce two lines of computers: simpler - Inel and more expensive - Excimer (five desktop PCs, five servers and two notebook PCs). Initially, only two models were sold - Excimer Voyage-Partner and Excimer Voyage-Champion. The first is an average performance PC based on Pentium processors with a clock frequency of 133 to 200 MHz, 16 or 32 MB of RAM, a 10-speed CD drive and an 11.3-inch screen. The second model was focused on applications with increased requirements for PC resources. It was built on Pentium MMX 166 - 233 MHz processors,possessed a CD reader with 20x speed and 32 MB of RAM. The diagonal screen size is 14.2 inches. The price of the device was $ 3950.

The company successfully overcame the 1998 economic crisis by increasing computer production and its market share in Russia. And in 1999, she created a new organization, Inline, a wide-profile distributor of computer equipment, components and peripherals. Nothing has been heard about Inel since 2013; Excimer still lives on.

Excimer

LG (Lucky Goldstar)

Yes, I know that such computers were. Perhaps this is all I know about them. In 1981, Lucky Engineering launched the first Korean computer. Here is a short description of the computer for the Korean market. If you have something interesting on the topic - unsubscribe in the comments or share in PM.

Goldstar

MC Proxima (R-Style Computers)

Another Russian company that decided in the 90s to begin the development of the home computer market was R-Style Computers, part of the R-Style holding. Since October 1, 1996, as part of the “Your Personal Computer” marketing program, she proposed a computer of her own design, Proxima MC. “Ready-made full-featured system for the home” - this is how it was presented at a presentation in the office of the company. The buyer received a computer with pre-installed MS-DOS and Windows 95 in the following configuration: Pentium-133 processor, 16 MB RAM, 1 GB hard drive, active speakers, 15-inch monitor, 2-MB video card, integrated 16-bit sound card and 8X CD-ROM drive. An additional option was the ability to purchase a modem.

In September 1997, the R-Style group made two major acquisitions. At the beginning of the month, the company “Cyril and Methodius” joined the group, known for its encyclopedic series, released on CD-ROM. A little later, a similar agreement was signed with New Media Generation, which was known for its series of interactive cartoons "Tutti's Magic Stories", computer games "The Ghost of the Old Castle", "Sea Legends" and educational programs for children. As a result, the R-Style group received a ready-made multimedia division, 40 items of various products sold on the market and the possibility of entering the Western market. On August 1, R-Style Computers launched a new model of multimedia notebook PCs. R-Style Tornado based on the 166 MHz Pentium MMX processor (for mobile systems).

Proxima PC cases have always been distinguished by a good design that is different from others. Yes, and marketing, the company was in full order. In July 1997, R-Style Computers signed an agreement with the Bill Gates empire under which R-Style Proxima computers could be equipped with Microsoft's IntelliMouse. The price of such a mouse was $ 86, but R-Style Proxima customers could buy it for only $ 18. And on the occasion of the 850th anniversary of Moscow, an inexpensive office computer called R-Style Proxima 850 was released. The package included a system unit based on a 166 MHz Pentium processor, 16 MB RAM, 1.4 GB hard drive, Trio 64V + SVGA 1 MB video card , 256 KB pipelined cache, 14-inch monitor. The following are preinstalled on the PC: Russian version of MS Windows 95, Adobe Acrobat Reader, home accounting RS-Money, software for working on the Internet.

Due to the reduction in demand for all types of products, and, in particular, for computers, after the 1998 crisis, many Russian assemblers fell into a state of gloom and stagnation for some time. Do not pass a similar fate and R-Style Computers. The portable PC market in Russia has “shrunk”. The company tried to find a way out of the situation and worked for several more years. But after allegations of fraud by company executives, R-Style was liquidated in 2015.

R-Style Proxima MC 760

NeXT, Inc. (later NeXT Computer, Inc. and NeXT Software, Inc.) is a California-based computer company that designed and manufactured graphic workstations designed for universities and businesses. NeXT was founded in 1985 by Steve Jobs after his resignation from Apple. NeXT introduced the first NeXT Computer in 1988 and the downsized NeXT station in 1990. Sales were relatively limited, shipments of devices in total amounted to approximately 50 thousand units.

In 1987, the NeXT team was joined by the Mach microkernel development team, led by Avetis Tevanyan, to work on the NeXTSTEP object-oriented operating system. In the same year, the company's first plant was opened in Fremont, California. The first workstation of the company was NeXT Computer - the case of the system unit was an ideal cube with a side of 30.48 cm.The presentation of the working prototype of the computer took place on October 12, 1988. NeXT computers went on sale only in mid-1989 at a price of $ 6,500 and at first they were sold in limited quantities for universities with a pre-installed beta version of the NeXTSTEP operating system. NeXT Computer consisted of a 32-bit Motorola 68030 microprocessor with a clock frequency of 25 MHz, 8-64 MB of RAM, a 256 MB magneto-optical disk,a 330 or 660 MB hard drive, 10Base-2 Ethernet, a 17-inch black and white MegaPixel monitor with a screen resolution of 1120 by 832 pixels. Parsing a devicewas on Habré .

NeXT Computer was not a commercial success, and in 1990 NeXT switched to the NeXTcube. The new lineup included a redesigned NeXT computer, called the NeXTcube and NeXTstation, called the “cooker”, using the “pizza box” form factor. The magneto-optical disk has been replaced by a 2.88-MB floppy disk. However, they were expensive and were replaced by 1.44-Mb floppy disks. In addition, a CD-ROM was built into NeXT, which has become the standard for data storage. NeXTstation provided color graphics with the NeXTdimension graphics processor, the new Motorola 68040 processor. The new computers were cheaper and more powerful than their predecessors. Like its predecessor, NeXTcube worked on the NeXTSTEP operating system. Tim Berners-Lee used the NeXT computer in 1991 to create the first web browser and web server.In the early 1990s, John Carmack used NeXTcube to create two of his games - Wolfenstein 3D and Doom

The model was produced from 1990 to 1993, then NeXT put on sale “turbo” versions of the NeXTcube and NeXTstation with a 33-MHz Motorola 68040 processor and a maximum RAM capacity of 128 MB. The long-term goal of the NeXT project was to migrate to processors with the RISC architecture needed to further increase productivity. This project was known as the NeXT RISC Workstation (NRW). Initially, NRW was supposed to be based on Motorola 88110 processors, but due to uncertainties in Motorola and its m88k-based processors, the project was later transferred to PowerPC 601s processors.

NeXT ceased production of computers in 1993 and was renamed NeXT Software Inc. Apple bought NeXT on December 20, 1996 for $ 429 million, which is why most of the current Mac OS X is based on OPENSTEP (a specific implementation of OpenStep). WebObjects is currently distributed with Mac OS X Server and Xcode.

NEXT_Cube and NeXTstation

NEXT_Cub

NeXTstation

Nixdorf

Nixdorf Computer AG is a German company founded by Heinz Nixdorf in 1952 and has become a serious player in the computer market. In 1985, Nixdorf AG sold 4 billion German marks. A year later, the founder of the company died, and 4 years later, on October 1, 1990, Siemens acquired Nixdorf shares. So there was Siemens Nixdorf (SNI). SNI produced the BS2000 and SINIX operating systems, the BS2000 mainframes, the RM-x00 SNI RISC servers and a wide variety of software and hardware (from personal computers, monitors and keyboards to SAP R / 3-based solutions).

The Siemens Nixdorf family of personal computers consisted of four areas. Scenic Pro Desktop Computers- This is a PC for business. Motherboards based on Intel 430HX PCIset and Intel 440FX PCIset, three chassis options (Compact desktop, Desktop and Minitowe) r. All models could be ordered with both Intel Pentium and Intel Pentium Pro processor. It was possible to equip a computer with graphic controllers, sound cards, network equipment, a chipcard reader device designed to control and prevent unauthorized access to the system. Multimedia computers of the Scenic Multimedium series for home users. Siemens Scenic Celsius —professional workstations for CAD / CAM applications. Scenic Pro Net Network Computercombined the power of a networked computer with the benefits of a PC. He had a powerful Intel Pentium processor, roomy RAM, a network card and the ability to connect a CD-ROM or floppy drive.

The family of portable computers was represented by the Scenic Mobile 300, 500 and 700 models. Laptops had a modular structure, an extensive set of peripherals and various options for pre-installed software. Scenic Mobile 300 - entry-level models. Equipped with Intel Pentium 120-133 processors, they had a 1-1.3 GB hard drive with the ability to replace it with an 8X CD-ROM, a color SVGA DSTN or TFT matrix and two standard PC Card slots. In Scenic Mobile 500multimedia features, an Intel Pentium 150 MMX processor, a sound card and built-in speakers are added to standard features. These models possessed the so-called FlexiBay - a universal seat for installing various additional devices. Moreover, the total weight of such a computer did not exceed 2.5 kg. Scenic Mobile 700 is a series of powerful laptops with built-in IrDA interface for wireless information exchange. Two PC card slots made it possible to install modems, network cards or even a hard drive of the corresponding form factor. In 2 FlexiBay installation locations, a floppy drive, CD-ROM, additional power supply or hard drive could be installed. The device chip was a removable rear panel of the screen

Series of servers Siemens Nixdorf PrimergyOffered reliability and complete information security. The Primergy 100 server for a small office, the middle-class servers of workgroups and small enterprises Primergy 300 and 500, as well as the scalable server, the ability to install Primergy 700 racks are still remembered by many experts. In Russia, the turnover of Siemens Nixdorf in 1990 amounted to 186.3 million German marks. SNI was the largest IT company in Europe until 1998 when, as a result of the reorganization, Siemens AG was divided into three parts: Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Wincor Nixdorf AG and Siemens Business Services.

Siemens Nixdorf Scenic Pro M6 200

Oki

Founded back in 1881, the company released the first telephone in Japan in 1881, just five years after Bell invented it. And in the future, the company tried to keep pace with technological progress, therefore, could not get past the sphere of computer production. In May 1980, OKI launched the IF-800 series , which was successful. In October 1991, OKITAC S 4 / 630MP, 4 / 670MP and 4 / 690MP appeared on the market. These were OEM machines supplied by Sun Microsystems Japan. They had 40 MHz SPARC processors, and the four-processor model reached a bandwidth of 90.3 SPECint. In 1993, OKI introduced the OKITAC-9000 UNIX server / workstation to the market.

The OKITAC-9000 series was an OEM machine supplied by Hewlett-Packard as part of a major supply agreement in April 1992. Oki Electric launched the OKITAC-9000 800 line with 13 models (F10, F20, H20, F30, G30, H30, I30, G40, H40, I40, G50, H50, I50) in December 1992. The processor clock speeds ranged from 32 MHz to 96 MHz.

In the early 90s, the Japanese economy was in a state of recession, which continued after the collapse of the economy, which also dealt a severe blow to OKI's computer business. In October 1994, OKI ceased its activities in the production of computers. However, Oki Electric continued to actively expand its product range by launching the V2250 with PA-8200 (240 MHz) processors in 1998 and Superdome with PA-8600 processors (552 MHz) in 2000. Then the company focused on the release of server hardware.

Oki Electric OKITAC-9000 serie

Olivetti

Italian Olivetti since 1908 was engaged in the production of typewriters, and excelled in this field. However, in other industries, the company managed to leave its mark. In 1959, Olivetti launched the Elea 9003, a transistor computer system, and the first M20 personal computer (based on the American Zilog Z8000), appeared in 1982. A year later, the Olivetti M10 laptop was released, which was not in great demand. In 1985, the company acquired a controlling stake in Acorn Computers Ltd, after which it began selling Thomson MO6 and Acorn BBC Master Compact models under the name Olivetti Prodest PC128 and PC128s.

In 1987, Olivetti introduced the LSX line of computers based on the Motorola 68000 processor, and two years later a new generation of LSXs based on the 80486 was released. Since the beginning of the 90s, Italians have been selling their M300-100 computers with a frequency of 16 MHz with an 80386SX processor, even in New Zealand ( Video review of the M300-200 model) The devices were used as a graphic workstation for designers using Corel Draw. Olivetti computers were pretty good, but painfully expensive. Perhaps that is why they were almost not in demand in foreign markets. Yes, and in Russia were rare. The result of an unsuccessful financial policy was that already in 1991 Olivetti began to have problems with supplies, and the company began to leave the market. The company continued to work on the computer market for some time, and even introduced the Envision multimedia PC in 1995, but this project was not successful. Olivetti sold its latest PC in 1997. Later, they tried to revive the company, and even successfully in some places. But this is a completely different story.

Olivetti ENVISION 400

What else is useful to read on the Cloud4Y blog

→ Life of a data byte
→ Computer brands of the 90s, part 1
→ Easter eggs on topographic maps of Switzerland
→ How a hacker’s mother got into prison and infected her boss’s computer
→ How did the bank “break”

Subscribe to our Telegram - channel, so as not to miss another article! We write no more than twice a week and only on business. We also remind you that Cloud4Y can provide safe and reliable remote access to business applications and information necessary to ensure business continuity. Remote work is an additional barrier to the spread of coronavirus. Details - at our managers onsite .

Computer brands of the 90s, part 2