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Which defunct/disappeared computer manufacturer would you bring back?

D

DOS lives on!!

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Over the years, there's been many changes in names and the different innovations of products that come and go with time. So which company would you wish to see put their products back on the shelves?

My favorites are:
1. Leading Edge
2. Sperry
3. AST
4. Gateway 2000
5. Packard Bell
6. PC Brand

I for one would also like if the companies came back, that they would get their old BBSs up and running again.
 
I'm torn between Commodore and DEC. I love the Amiga and it should've gone on to much greater success than it achieved (I know I'm one voice in many on this, but it totally should have won the personal-computer wars,) but unfortunately it lost its chance long before the company itself died, thanks to Commodore's refusal to do any serious R&D on the architecture after the initial launch. DEC, on the other hand, only really faltered at the end; I'd love to see what would have happened if they stuck with the Alpha architecture and Windows NT (they should've pushed it into the PC market, that's what I say.)
 
I'd really want to bring back Packard Bell in the days that they still put this logo:
PackardBell602earlyfinished.jpg
on their computers.
 
Not quite sure where all the royalties lay but DEC was bought by Compaq then Compaq was bought by HP. Obviously no newly labelled DEC gear though. Amiga still exists unfortunately. I do recall Gateway bought a lot of the IP though and later sold them so someone I can't recall but as obscure as it is Amiga has still be throwing new equipment to their fanbase and trying to work on their own operating system still. I've lost track of the latest model .. either X1000 or AmigaOne or something have both come out recently using newer PowerPC hardware. Amiga OS 4.1 I think is the currentish version of the OS although it's certainly been lagging behind in hardware support.

(Was hunting for some URL proof). This is rather interesting for Tower owners and 1200 owners. With a bunch of mods installed apparently it's supported on the new OS. Now of course you would just have to find something to do on the new OS to make it useful (sorta like forcing yourself to work with Ecomstation).
 
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DOS lives on!! said:
I'd really want to bring back Packard Bell in the days that they still put this logo:
PackardBell602earlyfinished.jpg
on their computers.
Click to expand...

They shipped computers with that logo? Packard Bell Computers had nothing to do with the earlier electronics manufacturer (they made TVs and radios in the 1960s), they just bought the name. Wikipedia's article seems to ignore that history however. Today they still exist in Europe as a sub-brand of Acer.

I'd bring back Micron and ZEOS. Both made some solid clone machines.
 
lucasdaytona said:
Is Philco dead in USA? It still exists in Brazil.
Click to expand...

I believe Philco Brazil was a division of Hitachi. I don't know who owns it now. An interesting historical tidbit from WikiP:

From the early 1940s, Philco was legally able to prevent Philips from using the name "Philips" on any products marketed in the USA, because the two names were judged to sound similar and that it may cause litigation. As a result, Philips instead used the name Norelco, an acronym for "North American Philips [electrical] Company." Philips continued to use that name for all their US products until 1974, when Philips purchased The Magnavox Company. Philips then relabeled their US consumer electronics products to the Magnavox name, but retained the Norelco name for their other US products. When Philips bought Philco in 1981, Philips was able to freely use the Philips name for all of their US products, but they chose to retain the Norelco name for personal care appliances, and the Magnavox name for economy-priced consumer electronics.
Click to expand...

But the post topic got me to thinking--what happened to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?

Snow White (IBM) is still around, no surprise there! But what of the dwarfs?

Burroughs - eaten by Unisys
Control Data - died
Honeywell - sold computing to Groupe Bull.
RCA - sold computing to Univac/Sperry-Rand
NCR - acquired by AT&T, then spun off as an independent firm, sold its computer manufacturing to Solectron, still sells POS terminals, ATM machines, etc.
GE - sold computing to Honeywell
Univac - merged with its parent Remington Rand to Sperry

So the rule seems to be get eaten, evolve or die.
 
None of them, because they'd just make another intel based system with a higher price like everybody else :p More of the same.
I would've liked to have seen the Wang PC do better, it was expensive but they're built like tanks and had a lot more features over the IBM.
 
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