Orchid Technology was a privately held company founded by Le Nhon Bui in 1982.

History

1982 to 1984

The company's original flagship product was its PCNet card, a 1 megabit-per-second LAN (networking) card for

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the List of IBM Personal Computer models, IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on ...

s and clones. Notably, the acronym

LAN Lan or LAN may refer to: Science and technology * Local asymptotic normality, a fundamental property of regular models in statistics * Longitude of the ascending node, one of the orbital elements used to specify the orbit of an object in space * ...

(Local Area Networking) is the

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overseas Vietnamese, Vietnamese people living outside Vietna ...

word for "Orchid". Hence, the origin of the company name. Also in 1982, it introduced the Orchid Graphics Adapter, a graphics board for

IBM PC compatible An IBM PC compatible is any personal computer that is hardware- and software-compatible with the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) and its subsequent models. Like the original IBM PC, an IBM PC–compatible computer uses an x86-based central p ...

computers. It was intended to provide high resolution (at the time) monochrome graphic abilities to computers limited to text displays. It was aimed at the business market and one of the three first third party graphic boards for PCs. After this successful product, the company embarked on introducing high-performance add-in cards, most notably the LIM ( Lotus, Intel Microsoft standard) which extended

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

out to 1M, Multi-purpose network cards that included

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

, clock, serial printer ports and Network COAX TCP-IP capabilities. Orchid developed its own

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

as well as one of the first 5 OEM's of Novell. Other products included PC Turbo, TinyTurbo and TurboVGA enhancement cards that included 186 and 286 processors. As the operating systems took on more resources Orchid made a switch back to its roots as PC board manufacturer.

1984 to 1986

From 1984 to 1986 the company switched to an

Autocad AutoCAD is a 2D and 3D computer-aided design (CAD) software application developed by Autodesk. It was first released in December 1982 for the CP/M and IBM PC platforms as a desktop app running on microcomputers with internal graphics control ...

video board manufacturer. Later, a variety of memory and video cards were introduced.

After 1988

In 1988, Orchid started designing and selling back-plane motherboards under the Privilege Systems Division. However, Orchid could not garner any significant market-share due to stiff competition from motherboard makers Micronics Computers, Inc., Mylex Corporation and American Megatrends Inc. (AMI), the original motherboard brand names in the industry.

1994

In August 1994, Orchid Technology was acquired by

motherboard A motherboard, also called a mainboard, a system board, a logic board, and informally a mobo (see #Nomenclature, "Nomenclature" section), is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expandable systems. It ho ...

maker Micronics Computers, Inc. Orchid sold their products through Direct to Fortune companies, OEMs, System Integrators and National Distributors such as Gates/FA, Techdata, Ingram and Micro D.

Graphic Cards

Orchid was known for its Righteous 3D, Fahrenheit Video3D and Kelvin 64 graphics accelerators. They also manufactured an array of

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

products including SoundWave 32 and GameWave 32 and the award-winning Vidiola line of digital capture and playback systems.

References

{{reflist 1982 establishments in California 1994 disestablishments in California 1994 mergers and acquisitions American companies established in 1982 American companies disestablished in 1994 Computer companies established in 1982 Computer companies disestablished in 1994 Defunct computer companies based in California Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies