Talk:Pertec

Background
Pertec Computer Corporation (PCC) started circa 1970 under the name of Peripherals Equipment Corporation (PEC), building incremental 7-track tape drives for use in mainframe computer systems.

By the early 1970's, the company had begun manufacturing 'synchronous' tape drives, i.e., instead of reel motors clicking forward and stopping after writing or reading blocks of data, the drive could 'stream' (continue running tape at full speed)during those operations provided the controlling computer could keep up with the data rate. This was accomplished by adding a third motor, the capstan motor, to drive the tape while the reel motors, in conjunction with position-sensing tension arms followed along.

In the mid-1970's numerous successful assembly lines had started up, including the D3000 series front- and top-loading disk drives, T7000 series, small reel-to-reel tape drives, T6000 and T8000 full-size reel-to reel drives and data formatters for interfacing with mainframe computers.

Forays into floppy-disk manufacturing were unsuccessful due to late entry into the market.

Acquisition of MITS,the manufacturer of the Altair computer based on the Intel 8080 microprocessor was also not successful also due to market timing issues.

At the same time, great successes were realized with the introduction of the T9000 series single vacuum column tape drive, the T1000 series dual vacuum column self-threading tape drive and the dual-format microformatter, which gave rise to what the industry now refers to the "Pertec Interface".

Building on the Pertec Interface and experience with thread-jet tape guidance and air pressure tape tensioning and bearing systems, Pertec introduced the Vindicator front-loading streaming (2 reel motors, no capstan motor) tape drive. Imitators soon followed and now this is the new industry standard for new system designs.

In the early 1980's, Pertec moved much of its manufacturing operations to Mexico from Chatsworth, CA, where the T1's and the new cartridge tape lines continued until operations eventually ceased due to sell-offs and a general industry downturn.


 * Pertec Peripherals Corporation, PPC, based in Chatworth, CA, made the tape drives. Pertec Computer Corportation, which was based in Irvine, CA, just south of the Tustin Marine base, (I worked there from 1980 to 1987), made the computer systems mentioned in the article. Jeffareid (talk) 11:39, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

PCC 3200
Porting CP/M to run on the Z80 based coax terminals was an after thought. The terminals main function was to serve as "smart" ASCII terminals. These Z80 based terminals communicated with the main 68000 based system via a shared high speed coax cable. The main system was a custom built multi-tasking operating system, but Unix was also ported to run on it. The key to disk application from the XL40 was re-implemented on the 3200. The other main application was a BASIC language driven database, similar to the ones used by Basic4 or Pick Systems. The BASIC database systems would be purchased by outside companies that bundled the PCC 3200 with their software to provide a complete small business package (accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, inventory, sales tracking, taxes, ...) customized for specific businesses.

I'll try to find more information and clean up the article when I get time. Jeffareid (talk) 12:00, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Pertec and MITS
There was source code for a Fortran compiler, and some other stuff, but I don't recall if it included Basic. Most of the acquired source code was written by a consulting company and apparently sold to both MITS and Microsoft. MITS had their own custom "DOS" which was different than CP/M, and the source code included conditionals to run in either environment. A few of the MITs employees relocated and worked at the Irvine office. I'm not sure what they worked on initially, but eventually the only ongoing project was related to the 3200 systems. Jeffareid (talk) 12:23, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Early Days of Pertec
I went tom work for Pertec in 1968-1970. I was the first Draftsman and if Iremember correctly, there was only 6 or 7 employee's including the officers. The 'original' name was PEC then changed to Pertec of which I won the contest that established that name. I wish I could remember the original founders of the company, which I'm sure retired very wealthy long ago. If my memory serves me correctly, the 3 originators, all 'laid off' Engineers got their heads together and decided, since they had some contacts, to design this "very" simple periphial, make a few bucks and sell out. Nope, didn't happen. Within a year or so they built a large building across the street and moved out of the rented small warehouse on the same street. Now they were rolling, etc, etc,. Was a neat little company and some really fun and wonderful people. By the way, I still have one of the original PEC bowling leaque shiorts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.46.245.232 (talk) 20:54, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Spreadsheet
I have worked with a Pertec machine in mid-70s. I recall it had a remarkable spreadsheet application where a cell could contain an actual well-structured multi-line code... anyone has some details for the article? Jmath666 (talk) 13:04, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Are you thinking about BOS/Planner? That would accept MicroCobol statements as cell content. The PCC2000 ran BOS very nicely and I did much development using it. LuciusAeliusSejanus (talk) 13:55, 31 January 2016 (UTC)