Orchid Technology was a privately held company founded by Le Nhon Bui in 1982.

History

1982 to 1984

The company's original flagship product was its PCNet card, a 1 megabit-per-second LAN (networking) card for

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...

s and clones. Notably, the acronym LAN (Local Area Networking) is the

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...

word for "Orchid". Hence, the origin of the company name. Also in 1982, it introduced the

Orchid Graphics Adapter The Orchid Graphics Adapter is a graphics board for IBM PC compatible computers, released in 1982 by Orchid Technology. It was intended to provide high resolution (at the time) monochrome graphic abilities to computers limited to text displays ...

, a

graphics board A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer mo ...

for

IBM PC compatible IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...

computers. It was intended to provide high resolution (at the time) monochrome graphic abilities to computers limited to text displays. It was aimed at the business market and one of the three first third party graphic boards for PCs. After this successful product, the company embarked on introducing high-performance add-in cards, most notably the LIM ( Lotus, Intel Microsoft standard) which extended

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

out to 1M, Multi-purpose network cards that included

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, clock,

serial printer ports Serial may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media The presentation of works in sequential segments * Serial (literature), serialised literature in print * Serial (publishing), periodical publications and newspapers * Serial (radio and televisio ...

and Network COAX TCP-IP capabilities. Orchid developed its own

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

as well as one of the first 5

OEM An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...

's of Novell. Other products included PC Turbo, TinyTurbo and TurboVGA enhancement cards that included

186 Year 186 ( CLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Aurelius and Glabrio (or, less frequently, year 939 ''Ab urbe co ...

and 286 processors. As the operating systems took on more resources Orchid made a switch back to its roots as PC board manufacturer.

1984 to 1986

From 1984 to 1986 the company switched to an

Autocad AutoCAD is a commercial computer-aided design (CAD) and drafting software application. Developed and marketed by Autodesk, AutoCAD was first released in December 1982 as a desktop app running on microcomputers with internal graphics controllers. ...

video board A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer mo ...

manufacturer. Later, a variety of memory and video cards were introduced.

After 1988

In 1988, Orchid started designing and selling back-plane motherboards under the Privilege Systems Division. However, Orchid could not garner any significant market-share due to stiff competition from motherboard makers Micronics Computers, Inc., Mylex Corporation and American Megatrends Inc.(AMI), the original motherboard brand names in the industry.

1994

In August 1994, Orchid Technology was acquired by

motherboard A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...

maker Micronics Computers, Inc. Orchid sold their products through Direct to Fortune companies,

OEMs An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...

, System Integrators and National Distributors such as Gates/FA, Techdata, Ingram and

Micro D Ingram Micro is an American distributor of information technology products and services. The company is based in Irvine, California, U.S. and has operations around the world. History Ingram Micro's origins trace back to the founding of distrib ...

Graphic Cards

Orchid was known for its Righteous 3D, Fahrenheit Video3D and Kelvin 64 graphics accelerators. They also manufactured an array of

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...

products including SoundWave 32 and GameWave 32 and the award-winning Vidiola line of digital capture and playback systems.

References

{{reflist Technology companies established in 1982