Microdata Reality

Pick systems was selling his equivalent of the Reality system at the time as an upgrade to the 1600, or on Intertechnique 1600 clones, which eventually were the Red boxed "Evolution" computers that he spun off. Anyway, we helped make a special firmware board for the 1600 system with a 5 card heart flush logo, that was the "royale flush" board. somewhere I have one of these with our R77 firmware on it. It was one of Pick's better jokes on Microdata. At the time, Microdata was trying to pull the marketning and sales of reality inhouse and had decleard war on their dealer network, a tactic which has been proven to be pretty stupid. I was in this case, as it lead to Micordata having to be acquired by McDonnell Douglas. McD was marketing a system thru a division called Health Systems, which needed the Reality, and could not jump to other hardware quickly. McD had the habit of making business units out of service division, so as such had what would today be called made the IT department into McAuto, and their inhouse early Healthcare providing group into this health system division, which sold an information management system to companies who were self insured in those days before formal HMO's. Jim Eric Smith wrote: