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MAI Basic Four (sometimes written as Basic/Four Corporation or Basic 4) refers to a variety of
History of MAIM.A.I. S10 Basic Four microcomputer system descriptionPictures and descriptions of a few different Basic Four computers
BASIC interpreters Defunct computer companies of the United States
MAI Basic Four (sometimes written as Basic/Four Corporation or Basic 4) refers to a variety of Business Basic Business Basic is a category of variants of the BASIC computer programming language which were specialised for business use on minicomputers in the 1970s and 1980s. To the underlying BASIC language, these dialects added record handling instructions ...
, the computers that ran it, and the company that sold them (its name at various times given as MAI Systems
MAI Systems Corporation, or simply MAI, was a United States-based computer company best known for its Basic/Four product and the customized computer systems that ran it. It was later known for its computer reservation systems.
The company formed ...
, MAI Basic Four Inc., and MAI Basic Four Information Systems).
Basic/Four Corporation was created as a subsidiary of Management Assistance, Inc. in Irvine, California
Irvine () is a Planned community, master-planned city in South Orange County, California, United States, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Irvine Company started developing the area in the 1960s and the city was formally incorporated on ...
. Basic/Four sold small business minicomputers that were assembled from Microdata Corporation
Microdata Corporation was an American minicomputer company which created the Reality product line featuring the Pick operating system.
In its history, Microdata
* was taken over by its international distributor CMC Leasings (December 1969),
* w ...
CPUs.
MAI Basic Four Business Basic was one of the first commercially available business BASIC interpreter
A BASIC interpreter is an interpreter that enables users to enter and run programs in the BASIC language and was, for the first part of the microcomputer era, the default application that computers would launch. Users were expected to use the BAS ...
s, in the 1970s. MAI Basic Four (the company) originally sold minicomputer
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...
s but later offered superminicomputer
A superminicomputer, colloquially supermini, is a high-end minicomputer. The term is used to distinguish the emerging 32-bit architecture midrange computers introduced in the mid to late 1970s from the classical 16-bit systems that preceded the ...
s and microcomputer
A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PC ...
s. The computers ran an operating system with the BASIC interpreter integrated. The BASIC interpreter was written in TREE-META
The TREE-META (or Tree Meta, TREEMETA) Translator Writing System is a compiler-compiler system for context-free languages originally developed in the 1960s. Parsing statements of the metalanguage resemble augmented Backus–Naur form with embedded ...
.
In 1985, Wall Street financier Bennett S. LeBow purchased the company after it had experienced significant operating financial losses.
In 1988, LeBow used the company as a platform for an unsuccessful attempted hostile takeover
In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to ...
of much larger Prime Computer
Prime Computer, Inc. was a Natick, Massachusetts-based producer of minicomputers from 1972 until 1992. With the advent of PCs and the decline of the minicomputer industry, Prime was forced out of the market in the early 1990s, and by the end of ...
.
The company released accounting software for third-party microcomputers in the mid 1980s. In 1988, it released its own 80286
The Intel 80286 (also marketed as the iAPX 286 and often called Intel 286) is a 16-bit microprocessor that was introduced on February 1, 1982. It was the first 8086-based CPU with separate, non-multiplexed address and data buses and also the fi ...
-based workstation.
The Basic4 system was utilized by many small banks and credit unions.
In 1990, the company changed its name to MAI Systems Corp. and changed its business to be a system integrator instead of a combined hardware and software manufacturer, reselling third-party computers but installing their own customer-specific software system. https://articles.latimes.com/keyword/mai-basic-four-inc Stories about MAI, retrieved June 9,2017
MAI Systems Corporation became a wholly owned subsidiary of Softbrands Inc. in 2006.
See also
* ''MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc.
''MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc.'', 991 F.2d 511 (9th Cir. 1993), was a case heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit which addressed the issue of whether the loading of software programs into random-access memo ...
''
References
{{ReflistExternal links
History of MAI
BASIC interpreters Defunct computer companies of the United States