System Industries, Inc., was an American computer hardware company active from 1968 to 1993. It produced printers and disk drives for minicomputers.

History

The firm was founded in 1968 by

Ed Zschau Edwin Van Wyck "Ed" Zschau (; born January 6, 1940) is an American educator who represented California's 12th District in the United States House of Representatives from 1983 to 1987. In 1986 he ran as the Republican candidate for a seat in t ...

with backing from

Brentwood Associates Brentwood Associates is a private equity firm in the US with groups focusing on leveraged buyout. The firm, which is based in Los Angeles, was founded in 1972. Their most recent fund was a $1.15bn fund raised in 2017. The venture capital group ...

, a private equity firm.Zschau, "rhymes with ''how''" Corporate earnings were followed by ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

. Their focus was to be a third-party provider of DEC-compatible equipment, especially for printers and disk drives (and their controllers). In 1992 they acquired

Emulex Emulex Corporation is a provider of computer network connectivity, monitoring and management hardware and software. The company's I/O connectivity offerings, including its line of Ethernet and Fibre Channel-based connectivity products, are or w ...

's disk drive business. By 1993 ''System Industries'' was dealing with a

Chapter 11 bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, whe ...

. That same year they introduced an eraseable optical disc product and an 8mm magnetic tape storage devices. ''System Industries'' was one of 19 manufacturers of disk drive products that were sued in the late 1980s and early 1990s by ''

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unt ...

'' for alleged patent violations. Individual settlements were reached.

Silonics

''System Industries'' had a subsidiary named Silonics, which made

ink-jet printer Inkjet printing is a type of computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper and plastic substrates. Inkjet printers were the most commonly used type of printer in 2008, and range from small inexpens ...

s. By 1980, ''System Industries'' found it more profitable to focus on its disk business.

SIMACS (SImultaneous Machine ACceSs)

''System Industries'' developed a capability for having more than one DEC CPU, but not at the same time, have write access to a shared disk. They implemented an enhancement called

SIMACS RSTS () is a multi-user time-sharing operating system developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC, now part of Hewlett-Packard) for the PDP-11 series of 16-bit minicomputers. The first version of RSTS (RSTS-11, #Versions, Version 1) was implem ...

(SImultaneous Machine ACceSs), which allowed their special disk controller to set a

semaphore flag Flag semaphore (from the Ancient Greek () 'sign' and - (-) '-bearer') is a semaphore system conveying information at a distance by means of visual signals with hand-held flags, rods, disks, paddles, or occasionally bare or gloved hands. Informa ...

for disk access, allowing multiple WRITES to the same files; the disk is shared by multiple DEC systems. SIMACS existed on

VAX VAX (an acronym for Virtual Address eXtension) is a series of computers featuring a 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) and virtual memory that was developed and sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the late 20th century. The VA ...

and

PDP-11 The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold, ...

RSTS systems.

Advertising

It's "''80 Mbytes of storage for under $12K!''" ad was considered noteworthy by ''

Computerworld ''Computerworld'' (abbreviated as CW) is an ongoing decades old professional publication which in 2014 "went digital." Its audience is information technology (IT) and business technology professionals, and is available via a publication website ...

'', which in 2007, 2012 and 2017 headlined "... And other ad favorites," "... And other IT ad favorites," and "10 fun tech ads through the years." A ''

CIO magazine ''CIO'' is a magazine related to technology and IT. The magazine was founded in 1987 and is now entirely digital. The name refers to the job title chief information officer. ''CIO'' is part of Boston-based International Data Group's enterprise ...

'' "looking-back" item also noted the aforementioned ad headline.

References

{{tech-company-stub 1968 establishments in California 1993 disestablishments in California American companies established in 1968 American companies disestablished in 1993 Computer companies established in 1968 Computer companies disestablished in 1993 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies