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Synertek
Synertek, Inc. was an American semiconductor manufacturer founded in 1973. The initial staff consisted of Bob Schreiner (the CEO), Dan Floyd, Jack Balletto, and Gunnar Wetlesen and Zvi Grinfas. Schreiner, Floyd, Balletto and Wetlesen were all formerly of Fairchild Semiconductor, and Synertek is thus one of the many "Fairchildren". The company became a major vendor during the late 1970s and early 1980s on the strength of their licensed production of the MOS 6502, one of the most successful microprocessors of the era. Synertek won supply deals with Apple Computer and Atari, who would produce millions of home computer and games consoles with Synertek 6502's inside. Synertek's original production factories had been cobbled together with used equipment, and quickly ran out of capacity for ever-growing orders. The board of directors was unwilling to fund the construction of a new factory that could handle the demand. This led to a 1979 deal with Honeywell, who agreed to buy the comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MOS 6502
The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small team led by Chuck Peddle for MOS Technology. The design team had formerly worked at Motorola on the Motorola 6800 project; the 6502 is essentially a simplified, less expensive and faster version of that design. When it was introduced in 1975, the 6502 was the least expensive microprocessor on the market by a considerable margin. It initially sold for less than one-sixth the cost of competing designs from larger companies, such as the 6800 or Intel 8080. Its introduction caused rapid decreases in pricing across the entire processor market. Along with the Zilog Z80, it sparked a series of projects that resulted in the home computer revolution of the early 1980s. Home video game consoles and home computers of the 1970s through the early ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Source
In the electronics industry, a second source is a company that is licensed to manufacture and sell components originally designed by another company (the first source). It is common for engineers and purchasers to seek components that are available from multiple sources, to avoid the risk that a problem with one supplier would prevent a product from being manufactured. For simple components such as resistors and transistors, this is not usually an issue, but for complex integrated circuits, vendors often react by licensing one or more other companies to manufacture and sell the same parts as second sources. While the details of such licenses are usually confidential, they often involve cross-licensing, so that each company also obtains the right to manufacture and sell parts designed by the other. In the early TTL device period wafers were smaller so production was limited. More production lead to lower prices and new designs rapidly emerged. Examples MOS Technology licensed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MOS Technology
MOS Technology, Inc. ("MOS" being short for Metal Oxide Semiconductor), later known as CSG (Commodore Semiconductor Group) and GMT Microelectronics, was a semiconductor design and fabrication company based in Audubon, Pennsylvania. It is most famous for its 6502 microprocessor and various designs for Commodore International's range of home computers. History Three former General Instrument executives, John Paivinen, Mort Jaffe and Don McLaughlin, formed MOS Technology in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in 1969. The Allen-Bradley Company was looking to provide a second source for electronic calculators and their chips designed by Texas Instruments (TI). In 1970 Allen-Bradley acquired a majority interest in MOS Technology. In the early 1970s, TI decided to release their own line of calculators, instead of selling just the chips inside them, and introduced them at a price that was lower than the price of the chipset alone. Many early chip companies were reliant on sales of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
VLSI Technology
VLSI Technology, Inc., was an American company that designed and manufactured custom and semi-custom integrated circuits (ICs). The company was based in Silicon Valley, with headquarters at 1109 McKay Drive in San Jose. Along with LSI Logic, VLSI Technology defined the leading edge of the application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) business, which accelerated the push of powerful embedded systems into affordable products. Initially the company often referred to itself as "VTI" (for VLSI Technology Inc.), and adopted a distinctive "VTI" logo. But it was forced to drop that designation in the mid-1980s because of a trademark conflict. VLSI was acquired in June 1999, for about $1 billion, by Philips Electronics and is today a part of the Philips spin-off NXP Semiconductors. History The company was founded in 1979, by a trio from Fairchild Semiconductor by way of Synertek – Jack Balletto, Dan Floyd, and Gunnar Wetlesen – and by Doug Fairbairn of Xerox PARC and Lam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "Clare of Assisi, Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities and towns in the San Francisco Bay Area, eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area, the city was founded by the Spanish in 1777 with the establishment of Mission Santa Clara de Asís under the leadership of Junípero Serra. Santa Clara is located in the center of Silicon Valley and is home to the headquarters of companies such as Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Nvidia. It is also home to Santa Clara University, the oldest university in California, and Levi's Stadium, the home of the National Football League's San Francisco 49ers, and California's Great America Park. Santa Clara is bordered by San Jose, California, San Jose on almost every side, except for Sunnyvale, California, Sunnyv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shift Registers
A shift register is a type of digital circuit using a cascade of flip-flops where the output of one flip-flop is connected to the input of the next. They share a single clock signal, which causes the data stored in the system to shift from one location to the next. By connecting the last flip-flop back to the first, the data can cycle within the shifters for extended periods, and in this configuration they were used as computer memory, displacing delay-line memory systems in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In most cases, several parallel shift registers would be used to build a larger memory pool known as a "bit array". Data was stored into the array and read back out in parallel, often as a computer word, while each bit was stored serially in the shift registers. There is an inherent trade-off in the design of bit arrays; putting more flip-flops in a row allows a single shifter to store more bits, but requires more clock cycles to push the data through all of the shifters before t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cash On Delivery
Cash on delivery (COD), sometimes called payment on delivery, cash on demand, payment on demand or collect on delivery is the sale of goods by mail order where payment is made on delivery rather than in advance. If the goods are not paid for, they are returned to the retailer. Originally, the term applied only to payment by cash but as other forms of payment have become more common, the word "cash" has sometimes been replaced with the word "collect" to include transactions by checks, money orders, credit cards or debit cards. Advantages and disadvantages for retailers Advantages of COD for online or mail order retailers: *The customer does not need to own a credit card to purchase. *Impulse purchases may increase as payment is not due at the time of ordering. *The credibility of retailers may be increased because the consumer only has to pay when the item is delivered. Disadvantages of COD for online or mail order retailers: *Orders might be returned as buyers are less commit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heathkit
Heathkit is the brand name of kits and other electronic products produced and marketed by the Heath Company. The products over the decades have included electronic test equipment, high fidelity home audio equipment, television receivers, amateur radio equipment, robots, electronic ignition conversion modules for early model cars with point style ignitions, and the influential Heath Heathkit H8, H-8, Zenith Z-89, H-89, and Heathkit H11, H-11 hobbyist computers, which were sold in Electronic kit, kit form for assembly by the purchaser. Heathkit manufactured electronic kits from 1947 until 1992. After closing that business, the Heath Company continued with its products for education, and motion-sensor lighting controls. The lighting control business was sold around 2000. The company announced in 2011 that they were reentering the kit business after a 20-year hiatus but then filed for bankruptcy in 2012,Swindwa, Julie"Disassembly complete: Heathkit is no more" ''The Herald-Palladium ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar. He was a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with his early business partner and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Jobs was born in San Francisco in 1955 and adopted shortly afterwards. He attended Reed College in 1972 before withdrawing that same year. In 1974, he traveled through India, Hippie trail, seeking enlightenment before later studying Buddhism in the West#Emerging mainstream western Buddhism, Zen Buddhism. He and Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 to further develop and sell Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. Together, the duo gained fame and wealth a year later with production and sale of the Apple II, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers. Jobs saw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steve Wozniak
Stephen Gary Wozniak (; born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname Woz, is an American technology entrepreneur, electrical engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, and inventor. In 1976, he co-founded Apple Inc., Apple Computer with his early business partner Steve Jobs. Through his work at Apple in the 1970s and 1980s, he is widely recognized as one of the most prominent pioneers of the personal computer revolution. In 1975, Wozniak started developing the Apple I, Apple I into the computer that launched Apple when he and Jobs first began marketing it the following year. He was the primary designer of the Apple II (1977 computer), Apple II, introduced in 1977, known as one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers, while Jobs oversaw the development of its foam-molded plastic case and early Apple employee Rod Holt developed its switched-mode power supply, switching power supply. With human–computer interface expert Jef Raskin, Wozniak had a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Coast Computer Faire
The West Coast Computer Faire was an annual computer industry conference and exposition most often associated with San Francisco, its first and most frequent venue. The first fair was held in 1977 and was organized by Jim Warren (computer specialist), Jim Warren and Bob Reiling. At the time, it was the biggest computer show in the world, intended to popularize the personal computer in the home. The West Coast PC Faire was formed to provide a more specialized show. However, Apple Inc. stopped exhibiting at the West Coast Computer Faire, refusing to exhibit at any show other than COMDEX that also had PC-based exhibits. In 1983, Warren sold the rights to the Faire for US$3 million to Prentice Hall, who later sold it to Sheldon Adelson, the owner of Interface Group and COMDEX. In total, sixteen shows were held, with the last in 1991. After Warren sold the show, it had a few more good years, and then declined rapidly. History The first fair took place on April 15–17, 1977, in San F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been radio-related communication equipment such as two-way radios, consumer walkie-talkies, cellular infrastructure, mobile phones, satellite communicators, pagers, as well as cable modems and semiconductors. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, Motorola was split into two independent public companies: Motorola Solutions (its legal successor) and Motorola Mobility (spun off), on January 4, 2011. Motorola designed and sold wireless network equipment such as cellular transmission base stations and signal amplifiers. Its business and government customers consisted mainly of wireless voice and broadband systems (used to build private networks), and public safety communications systems like Astro and Dimetra. Motorola's h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
