Wang certainly used other components. Their big fixed disc drives are the same as Honeywell, who also got them from someone else. As the machines are not ready to hand, I can't peek to see the builder's name. They used Data Products for their 5573 printers, and I was surprised to find a Diablo 620 with a Wang badge. I think they also rebadged Racal-Vadic modems. On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Derek Peschel wrote: M. K. Peirce Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc. 215 Shady Lea Road, North Kingstown, RI 02852 "Casta est qui nemo rogavit." - Ovid

I think you will find that near EVERY company has done this to some point. Example - IBM System/88s are actually Stratus machines. William Donzelli william(a)ans.net

At 02:03 AM 3/8/99 -0800, you wrote: I used to work for Burroughs and I know they made printer ribbons for a LOT of other companies. The surprising bit was that those ribbons were usually better quality and cheaper than the ribbons that Burroughs made for themselves. The Burroughs ribbons were pretty bad. Sales of Burroughs ribbons got so bad that Burroughs started trying to force their field engineers to peddle Burroughs ribbons and other junk to their customers. Joe

On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Derek Peschel wrote: Its mostly specialized peripherals that were OEM'd (or re-badged) like printers and modems. IBM OEM'd their Proprinter from Epson for instance. VTech (or Video Technology) manufactured many different computers that showed up under other company's names. The Altair (and many other S-100 boxes, especially Compupro) was integrated into specialized industrial control applications. A perfect example is a MITS box selling on eBay right now as a Sherwood Medical blood analysis machine. Thousands of Compupro boxes are still in operation today, but you wouldn't know it because they are integrated into a complete system sold under a different company's name. I recently found a Rockwell AIM-65 that was sold as some sort of controller. Lots of the early single-board computers made their way into industrial control applications as well. I remember reading an article about a guy who took Radio Shack M100's and used them to control washing machines in heavy duty landromats. So there are many, many examples. Its all about making money. A lot of companies don't see a need to re-invent the wheel. They integrate whatever is already out there and make a lot of money. Others, like Apple, refuse to use even basic elements that already exist, like the disk drive, which is whey they went through the trouble of designing the Tiwggy drives that went into the first Lisa that were so unreliable. Ever heard of NIH? Not Invented Here? Apple is the leader in NIH. Meaning if its not invented here its CRAP!! A lot of times one company will put out a design spec for manufacturers to bid upon. This is usually the case when the company does not have the manufacturing or R&D facilities to design such-n-such themselves, and/or don't want to put the resources into doing it because its not in their business plan to be a manufacturer or R&D lab. Another interesting example is Morrow. In the mid-80's the IRS put out an RFP (Request For Proposal) for a portable computer for their field agents. Morrow designed the Pivot Portable (which I believe I learned not too long ago was actually designed by yet another firm) and bid the contract themselves, but also licensed the design to Zenith who eventually won the contract. Go figure. Its all specific to the deal struck between the companies involved. Some want it all, others just want the end product. That's not true. If a company like IBM, for instance, OEM's a printer and sells it with their name on it that turns out to be a piece of shit, who do you think gets the bad press, the name on the badge or the company that built it? Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't rub the lamp if you don't want the genie to come out. Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0 See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details! [Last web site update: 02/15/99]

My own recent experience with this has been the Sigma RQ11 ESDI controller. Through various comments here and on the net I tracked down Webster Computer in Los Gatos who had a controller called the WQESD controller and it too ran an on-board executive called WOMBAT. I talked to David Webster and he said that both the Sigma controller and the Qualogy controller were both licensed from Webster and were substantially similar. I ordered a copy of the manual from him and it arrived on Friday. I must say they are darn near identical to the Sigma controller and the Qualogy controller (I've got one of each it turns out) In "modern" times I've experienced rabadging in the 3D accellerator market where everyone who makes a "Voodoo2" based 3D accellerator essentially uses the 3DFX reference design. Consequently they all pretty much perform the same. Rebadging was more prevalent earlier when everything had to appear to come here and there. --Chuck