SMT Goupil (SMT - "Society of Microcomputing and Telecommunications") was a French IT company created in 1979 by Claude Perdrillat, previously a senior executive in the General Directorate of Telecommunications. The company produced many

microcomputers A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (P ...

during the 1980s, mainly for French government agencies. This market collapsed at the end of the 1980s with the appearance of drastic budgetary restrictions in the French public sector and competition from more aggressive technological rivals like

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

and

Olivetti Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been owned b ...

. Despite a significant debt of 40 million francs, the company went public in 1985, claiming to hold 15% of the French microcomputer market. In January 1990, Goupil claimed to hold 18% of the market for professional microcomputers in France. The company filed for bankruptcy in June 1991 with the accounting books revealing a debt of 700 million francs and a real turnover of 830 million francs in 1990.

Models

The first Goupil G1 and G2 computers offered a promising architecture, with the integration of the

Motorola 6808 The 6800 ("''sixty-eight hundred''") is an 8-bit microprocessor designed and first manufactured by Motorola in 1974. The MC6800 microprocessor was part of the M6800 Microcomputer System (later dubbed ''68xx'') that also included serial and parall ...

processor coupled with the FLEX operating system. The machines had a sober and integrated design with particular colors - slate blue and red. The G3 extended compatibility in order to conquer foreign markets, by offering two processors at a time (selected at start-up by a switch) among three choices: the very common

Motorola 6809 The Motorola 6809 ("''sixty-eight-oh-nine''") is an 8-bit microprocessor with some 16-bit features. It was designed by Motorola's Terry Ritter and Joel Boney and introduced in 1978. Although source compatible with the earlier Motorola 6800, the ...

Zilog Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog that played an important role in the evolution of early personal computing. Launched in 1976, it was designed to be Backward compatibility, software-compatible with the ...

and

Intel 8088 The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers ...

. This allowed the Flex 9 and UniFLEX operating systems that came with the machine to run under

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/Intel 8085, 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Dig ...

and

UCSD Pascal UCSD Pascal is a Pascal programming language system that runs on the UCSD p-System, a portable, highly machine-independent operating system. UCSD Pascal was first released in 1977. It was developed at the University of California, San Diego (UC ...

. The dark gray case, designed by designer

Roger Tallon Roger Tallon (6 March 1929 – 20 October 2011) was a French industrial designer. Biography After studying as an engineer (1944–1950), Tallon was employed by Caterpillar France and DuPont. In 1953, he joined Technès, the technical ...

, came with an integrated 12-inch

monochrome monitor A monochrome monitor is a type of computer monitor in which computer text and images are displayed in varying tones of only one color, as opposed to a color monitor that can display text and images in multiple colors. They were very common in t ...

, two

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

drives, and a bay for 7 extension cards in Goupil format. Further machines would seek IBM

PC compatibility An IBM PC compatible is any personal computer that is Computer hardware, hardware- and software-compatible with the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) and its List of IBM Personal Computer models, subsequent models. Like the original IBM PC, an IBM ...

, as it became a standard regarding government equipment. *1979: Goupil G1, basic desktop computer *1981: Goupil G2, desktop computer with multiple configurations similar to those of

Micral Micral is a series of microcomputers produced by the French company Réalisation d'Études Électroniques (:fr:R2E, R2E), beginning with the Micral N in early 1973. The Micral N was one of the first commercially available microprocessor-based compu ...

*1983: Goupil G3, ''Nanoréseau'''''' network machine, similar to Micral *1985: Goupil G4, PC-compatible desktop computer *1986: Goupil G40, desktop server version of the G4 *1986: Goupil Club, PC

Kaypro Kaypro Corporation was an American home and personal computer manufacturer based in Solana Beach, California, in the 1980s. The company was founded by Non-Linear Systems (NLS) to compete with the popular Osborne 1 portable microcomputer. Kaypro ...

2000 compatible laptop sold under license *1988: Goupil G5, PC-compatible desktop computer, several versions *1988: Goupil Golf, PC-compatible portable computer *1990: Goupil G50, tower server version of the G5 *1990: Goupil G100,

UNIX Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

server initially designed by

SFENA Société française d'équipements pour la navigation aérienne or SFENA was a former French avionics company. History It was founded in 1947. It was disbanded in 1989. It made the flight control system (AFCS) for Concorde, as well as its artifi ...

, characterized by input-output co-processors *1991: Goupil G6, PC-compatible desktop computer *1991: Goupil TOP, laptop with 10" backlit

LCD screen A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers to display information. Liquid crystals do not emi ...

under MS-DOS 5.0 (and

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series run as a shell on top of MS-DOS; it was the last Windows 1 ...

installed later), offered in 2 versions: TOP (

80286 The Intel 80286 (also marketed as the iAPX 286 and often called Intel 286) is a 16-bit microprocessor that was introduced on February 1, 1982. It was the first 8086-based CPU with separate, non-multiplexed address and data buses and also the fi ...

@ 12.5 MHz) & TOP SX (

80386 The Intel 386, originally released as the 80386 and later renamed i386, is the third-generation x86 architecture microprocessor from Intel. It was the first 32-bit processor in the line, making it a significant evolution in the x86 architect ...

SX @ 20 MHz), both with 20 MB hard drive

References

{{Authority control Computer companies of France Computer science education in France Computing for All Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct computer systems companies French companies established in 1979 French companies disestablished in 1991 History of computing in France Companies formerly listed on Euronext Paris 1980s initial public offerings

Models

See also

References