Talk:Columbia Data Products

Pre-PC computers

I found some mentions of "Columbia Data Products Series 900", which predate the PC, but nothing in depth visible in Google Books. Someone not using his real name (talk) 23:51, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Compatibility

This is a biased source being written by a Compaq co-founder, but it may hint to some of the reasons for the demise of CDP, i.e. compatibility wasn't that good. Someone not using his real name (talk) 23:58, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Expanding History

As the first true IBM PC compatible, CDP deserves a bit more history, but given how long ago it was, there are probably significant documentation issues. Perhaps my narrative will help others identify and add formal references.

As brief background, I purchased a CDP MPC-1600 in the fall of 1983 from an ad in the back of the WSJ. The standard model came with dual 360Kb 5’1/4 full-height DSFDD. This was roughly the timing of the switch from 5MB HDD to 10MB HDD option. A popular paring at the time was a CGA Princeton Graphics Systems (PGS) color monitor shown here at the American Museum of History [[1]] which is coincidentally shown here at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History which shows an MPC-1600 and an Okidata dot matrix printer.

The CDP MPC-1600 was notable for coming with a fairly complete suite of software (supplied on 5 1/4” dual sided floppy disks) that included MS-DOS 2.0, CP/M-86, Perfect series (Writer, Filer, Speller, Calc), MS-BASIC, Macro assembler, Home Accountant and a Space Commander game (a variant of Space Invaders). Documentation was a uniform boxed set of softbound manuals and included overlays for the function keys. The Perfect series was stable code ported from the CPM environment, limited by a 64K code and 64K data space, but Calc and Writer allowed for a swap file up to 192Kb. Perfect Writer largely replicated the EMACS commands. Calc was surprising full-featured but lacked a macro-environment. Filer was a convenience tool and not comparable to contemporary products such as dBase or Condor. I might add some photos of original disks and documentation which I have on hand, but photos are readily available on the internet.

The MPCs were supplied with a Key Tronic keyboard, which was nearly identical to the original IBM PC keyboard except that it was a more robust metal casting, the Return key was horizontal instead of vertical and the slash was repositioned to the left of the left Shift key.

The MPC was notable for including a ROM Monitor, which was activated by the Ctrl-Alt-Ins keys. If one was comfortable with HEX and assembler it was relatively easy to dump memory, read a disk sector, etc. Like the IBM PC, it came with an open socket for the 8087 math coprocessor.

Across the span of its product life, CDP updated the system BIOS for compatibility fixes. For existing computers, chips were sent out to individuals reporting specific problems. Since the BIOS was provided on EPROM, if one had multiple computers and a chip programmer, it was easy to clone a BIOS chip to update the other computers.

A major unreported chapter in the early history of CDP was its nascent relationship with Honeywell Information Systems, which envisioned contracting with CDP to provide Honeywell-labeled PCs into its existing channel sales of DPS-6 / GCOS customers, primarily in the banking, inventory management, and general office sectors. A key step was the development of a terminal emulator for Honeywell’s proprietary terminal, and later a VT-100 emulator for general compatibility. The first Honeywell labeled MPC was delivered to Honeywell corporate headquarters in Minneapolis at the beginning of 1984 for assessment by the corporate DPS-6 administrators, and later rolled out for general use in small numbers, including to the Plaza South data center. Over the next year, perhaps more than a thousand but less than 2000 Honeywell-labeled MPCs were acquired into Minneapolis Honeywell offices. The Honeywell labeled MPCs were supplied with reprinted versions of the software bundle also with Honeywell labeling in a unform dark brown format. MPCs were generally very compatible with all peripheral cards including Expanded Memory Cards (EMS), and hard drive cards, as well as a wide variety of networking cards.

Only a small number of CDP VP “luggable”, carry-on size portable computers were every acquired by Honeywell and never carried the Honeywell logo.

Unfortunately, there seemed to be a cultural mismatch between the small-scale entrepreneurial management of CDP and the Fortune 500 bureaucracy-heavy culture of Honeywell. Negotiations moved slowly, and as is documented, in the exploding clone marketplace, CDP dramatically cut its staff in August of 1984. Perhaps there was a hope that an expanded relationship could rescue the company, but my understanding is that Honeywell negotiations probably exhausted the CDP management. A few days after a visit by CDP management in May 1985 that supposedly resulted in an agreement, CDP filed for bankruptcy. I am not aware that CDP ever put forth a PCAT model for evaluation. Honeywell later arranged to brand and acquire NCR PCAT compatible computers. Zatsugaku (talk) 14:43, 22 October 2023 (UTC)