12 Nov
2005
12 Nov
'05
8:57 p.m.
On 11/12/2005 at 12:34 PM nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com wrote:
I have a couple of Fortune systems and some doc but
they're incomplete so I have done much with them yet.
If I ever find enough stuff to get them working I
will. We looked at Fortune years ago when my dad's
company was looking for a multi-user system for the
office. Kind of liked it at the time but the picked
an Altos instead as the company seemed a bit more
stable.
The company was hyped quite a bit with a healthy (for those days) dose of
startup capital; my impression of the firm from my position as a contractor
was that an awful lot of money was wasted just fooling around with things
not directly related to product development. I believe that their entry
system target price was $5000, not bad in those days.
But the PC, although not a Unix box, was sufficient to do it in.
One very rare item from this company would be their color graphics
terminal. I've only seen a prototype, but someone told me that it had
actually made it into production.
IIRC, Bill Joy was on contract to FS during most of the firm's existence.
Cheers,
Chuck