GreenSpring Computers was started in 1984 as VME Specialists. The original product focus was VMEbus cards for industrial automation. The company was founded by Leonard Lehmann and his father
Henry Lehmann
Henry Lehmann (August 21, 1929 – February 2, 2000), was the General Manager of General Electric's military systems operations in Syracuse, New York and a philanthropist within the American Jewish Community.
Childhood fleeing Nazi Germany
...
in
Redwood City
Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a po ...
,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
, United States.
Change of name
Around 1988, the company changed its name to GreenSpring Computers. With the name change came a change of focus away from VMEbus specific products to industrial automation products. The company worked with Apple Computers and SuperMac Technologies to design and manufacture the first video cards for the new Macintosh II product family. With the new Macintosh computers came the vision that the embedded market was looking for alternatives to industrial PCs running DOS. The RackMac became the only industrial version of the Macintosh computer available. In addition to the main computer (RM1200) was a 14" monitor available with a touchscreen (RM1240 w/o touchscreen and RM1250 w/ touchscreen).
Acquisition
GreenSpring Computers was acquired by
SBS Technologies
General Electric Automation and Controls division combines what was formerly known as GE Intelligent Platforms and Alstom's Power Automation and Controls. In 2019, GE Intelligent Platforms was acquired by Emerson Electric and is now called Machi ...
in April 1995. In 2006, SBS Technologies was acquired by
GE Fanuc Embedded Systems
General Electric Automation and Controls division combines what was formerly known as GE Intelligent Platforms and Alstom's Power Automation and Controls. In 2019, GE Intelligent Platforms was acquired by Emerson Electric and is now called Machi ...
.
The SBS headquarters in Albuquerque is now the headquarters for GE Fanuc Embedded Systems.
Original product line
Mezzanine modules
With the focus moving away from VMEbus only, Leonard brought on Kim Rubin to develop a bus independent module called IndustryPacks (IP). IndustryPack became recognized as an industry standard for mezzanine modules and was adopted by ANSI as VITA 4. These mezzanine modules are approximately the size of a business card (99mm x 45mm). Featuring a 16 or 32 bit wide I/O interface and 50 User defined I/O pins.
Original IPs
The big advancements for IPs was when Motorola adopted the standard for their MVME162 processor line (see
Motorola Single Board Computers
Motorola Single Board Computers is Motorola's production line of computer boards for embedded systems.A quote frothe NetBSD port page ''NetBSD/mvme68k is the port of NetBSD to Motorola's 68k VME Single Board Computers (SBC). The first Motorola S ...
) based on the
Motorola 68040
The Motorola 68040 ("''sixty-eight-oh-forty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 series, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060, skipping the 68050. In keeping with general Motorola nami ...
. In a short time, there were multiple IP manufacturers and over 100 different IP modules available.
Final product line
References
{{Reflist
External links
VMEbus International Trade Association (VITA)
Companies based in Redwood City, California