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General Computer Corporation (GCC), later GCC Technologies, was an American hardware and software company formed in 1981 by Doug Macrae, John Tylko, and Kevin Curran. The company began as a
video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...
developer and created the arcade games '' Ms. Pac-Man'' (1982) in-house for
Bally MIDWAY Midway Games Inc. (formerly Midway Manufacturing and Bally Midway, and commonly known simply as Midway) was an American video game company that existed from 1958 to 2010. Midway's franchises included ''Mortal Kombat'', ''Rampage (franchise), Ra ...
and '' Food Fight'' (1983) as well as designing the hardware for the
Atari 7800 The Atari 7800 ProSystem, or simply the Atari 7800, is a home video game console officially released by Atari Corporation in 1986 as the successor to both the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200. It can run almost all Atari 2600 cartridges, making it the ...
console and many of its games. In 1984 the company pivoted to developing home computer peripherals, such as the HyperDrive hard drive for the
Macintosh 128K The Macintosh, later rebranded as the Macintosh 128K, is the original Mac (computer), Macintosh personal computer from Apple Inc., Apple. It is the first successful mass-market All-in-one computer, all-in-one desktop personal computer with a gr ...
, and printers. GCC was disestablished in 2015.


History

GCC started out making mod-kits for arcade video games. ''Super Missile Attack'' was sold as an enhancement board to Atari, Inc.'s '' Missile Command''. Atari sued, but ultimately dropped the suit and hired GCC to develop game (and stop making enhancement boards for Atari's games without permission). They created an enhancement kit for ''
Pac-Man ''Pac-Man,'' originally called in Japan, is a 1980 maze video game developed and published by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. The pla ...
'' called ''Crazy Otto'' which they sold to Midway, who in turn sold it as the sequel '' Ms. Pac-Man''; they also developed '' Jr. Pac-Man'', that game's successor. Under Atari, Inc., GCC made the original arcade games '' Food Fight'', ''
Quantum In physics, a quantum (: quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity (physical property) involved in an interaction. The fundamental notion that a property can be "quantized" is referred to as "the hypothesis of quantization". This me ...
'', and the unreleased ''Nightmare''; developed the
Atari 2600 The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS), it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridg ...
versions of ''Ms. Pac-Man'' and ''
Centipede Centipedes (from Neo-Latin , "hundred", and Latin , "foot") are predatory arthropods belonging to the class Chilopoda (Ancient Greek , ''kheilos'', "lip", and Neo-Latin suffix , "foot", describing the forcipules) of the subphylum Myriapoda, ...
''; produced over half of the
Atari 5200 The Atari 5200 SuperSystem or simply Atari 5200 is a home video game console introduced in 1982 by Atari, Inc. as a higher-end complement for the popular Atari Video Computer System. The VCS was renamed to Atari 2600 at the time of the 5200' ...
cartridges; and developed the chip design for the
Atari 7800 The Atari 7800 ProSystem, or simply the Atari 7800, is a home video game console officially released by Atari Corporation in 1986 as the successor to both the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200. It can run almost all Atari 2600 cartridges, making it the ...
, plus the first round of cartridges for that system.


Peripherals

In 1984, the company changed direction to make peripherals for
Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
computers: the HyperDrive (the Mac's first internal hard drive), the WideWriter 360 large format
inkjet printer Inkjet printing is a type of printer (computing), computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper or plastic substrates. Inkjet printers were the most commonly used type of printer in 2008, and range f ...
, and the Personal Laser Printer (the first
QuickDraw QuickDraw was the 2D graphics library and associated application programming interface (API) which is a core part of classic Mac OS. It was initially written by Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld. QuickDraw still existed as part of the libraries ...
laser printer Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a Electric charge, negatively charged cylinder call ...
). Prior to closing, the company focused exclusively on laser printers. HyperDrive was unusual because the original Macintosh did not have any internal interfaces for hard disks. It was attached directly to the CPU, and ran about seven times faster than Apple's "Hard Disk 20", an external hard disk that attached to the floppy disk port. The HyperDrive was considered an elite upgrade at the time, though it was hobbled by Apple's Macintosh File System, which had been designed to manage 400K
floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...
s; as with other early Macintosh hard disks, the user had to segment the drive such that it appeared to be two or more partitions, called Drawers. In June 1985 Apple announced that installing GCC peripherals would not violate its warranty prohibiting installing non-Apple components. GCC said that it had cultivated the relationship by providing products to Apple employees. The second issue of ''
MacTech ''MacTech'' is a monthly magazine for consultants, IT Pros, system administrators, software developers, and other technical users of the Apple Macintosh line of computers. The magazine was called "MacTech" for its first two issues, starting in ...
'' magazine, in January 1985, included a letter that summed up the excitement: In 1986 GCC shipped the HyperDrive 2000, a 20MB internal hard disk that also includes a
Motorola 68881 The Motorola 68881 and Motorola 68882 are floating-point units (FPUs) used in some computer systems in conjunction with Motorola's 32-bit 68020 or 68030 microprocessors. These coprocessors are external chips, designed before floating point math ...
floating-point unit A floating-point unit (FPU), numeric processing unit (NPU), colloquially math coprocessor, is a part of a computer system specially designed to carry out operations on floating-point numbers. Typical operations are addition, subtraction, multip ...
, but the speed advantage of the HyperDrive had been negated on the new Macintosh Plus computers by Apple's inclusion of an external
SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...
port. General Computer responded with the "HyperDrive FX-20" external SCSI hard disk, but drowned in a sea of competitors that offered fast large hard disks. General Computer changed its name to GCC Technologies and relocated to
Burlington, Massachusetts Burlington is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 26,377 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. History It is believed that Burlington takes its name from the English town of Bridlington, York ...
. They continued to sell
laser printer Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a Electric charge, negatively charged cylinder call ...
s until 2015, at which point the company was disestablished.


Employees

* Elizabeth (Betty) Ryan * Lucy Gilbert


References

{{reflist


External links


GCC corporate homepageVideo: "College Dreams- the story of General Computer" Play Value - ON Networks
Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct computer systems companies Computer printer companies Computer peripheral companies Defunct video game companies of the United States Video game development companies Computer companies established in 1981 Computer companies disestablished in 2015 Electronics companies established in 1981 Electronics companies disestablished in 2015