- CADO Systems
CADO Systems was a minicomputer and software manufacturer in 1976. In 1983 was acquired by Contel Business Systems. In 1989 Contel Business Systems merged with NDS and became VERSYSS.
Business Model
Contel and CADO focused their marketing on vertical markets. The computers and operating systems were tailored to rapid development and deployment of market-specific applications for small businesses including:
* Finance (General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable)
* Wholesale distribution (Inventory, Point of Sales, Sales Analysis)
* Travel (Ticketing, Passenger Management)
* Medical (Billing, Patient Records)Product Offerings
CADO Systems manufactured Intel x86 based multi-user systems. The CAT product line consisted of:
* CAT I
* CAT II
* CAT IIIThe CAT III was a three-user system. The primary user sat at the CAT III system console, which contained the CPU, floppy drive, and hard disk. Other users connected to the system by way of serial terminals. By the end of the CAT series over 25,000 systems and 200,000 terminals were manufactured.
The terminals were proprietary also: they were similar to standard VT terminals, but with custom firmware programming to support input commands (protected fields).
In 1983 Contel introduced the Tiger ATS line of computers. These consisted of:
* Tiger 8
* Tiger 16
* Tiger 32
* Tiger 64The numbers designate how many users could connect to the machine at once. The chassis size ranged from a little larger than a breadbox (Tiger 8) to the size of a small household refrigerator (Tiger 64). The Tiger 32 and Tiger 64 models used multiple 8086 and 8089 processors to manage user requests.
In 1989 VERSYSS introduced the VERSYSS/Solution 1 line of computers. These differed dramatically from earlier systems. Instead of a completely proprietary hardware solution and operating systems, these were based on commodity components. The Operating System was a variant of AT&T's SYSVR3. To provide backward-compatibility with older applications, the older MMOS was run on proprietary boards connected to the system bus. Thus, users were completely unaware that they were using a Unix system.
* VS/1 model 150
* VS/1 model 250
* VS/1 model 500In 1993 VERSYSS partnered with IBM to port their MMOS to the
RS/6000 line of systems. At this point, almost all proprietary hardware requirements were dropped except the terminal firmware.Other Products
In 1985 Contel produced the CADOS emulator to run CADO software on standard IBM PC hardware.
See Also
CADO Systems Technical Information References
* Kent, Allen. "Encyclopedia of Microcomputers", CRC Press, ISBN 0824727037.
* Arthur Norberg. "Interview with George Ryan", 1993. http://special.lib.umn.edu/cbi/oh/pdf.phtml?id=239
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