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New S-100 Site. Question about S-100 board manufacturer IMS

monahan_z

Experienced Member
Joined
Oct 19, 2008
Messages
263
Location
San Ramon, CA
I have started putting together a web site completely focused on vintage S100 computers with a strong
focus on hardware. It's at www.S100Computers.com. I started it just a few months ago and clearly have a long way to go. This is strictly a hobby.

I think there is a need for a good central place that describes the different S-100 boards that anybody can quickly go to with good images and details/manuals about each board. As you might expect this is going to take a lot of time to do. I am allowing myself 2+ years! There are some other excellent sites but they are not consistant in
having everything in one place or having an extensive collection of images/manuals for all boards/manufacturers.


Anyway, I am working my way through the different companies doing the common/easy ones first. For each company I have tried to add a little history about the company.


One company, Industrial Micro Systems located in Orange,CA back in the early 1980's had a number of good S-100 boards. However I am drawing a complete blank about the history of the company or its founders.

Does anybody out there know about them. and/ot what happened to them.


PS. A few of the images I have so far on the site are not great. If you see a poor image of an S-100 board on the site and you have a better one please let me know. Also I am still looking for some manuals -- also indicated on the site.
 
Don't know about what became of IMS, but they did change their name sometime around 1980 to "IMS International" (I suppose the next step would have been "IMS Intergalactic").

Here's a cache of IMS 5000 system docs. Note that the text in a lot of these says "IMS International", but the schematics say "Industrial Micro Systems".

About all that I remember of IMS is that the IMS 5000 and 8000 were one of the few systems that ran TurboDOS. Televideo was another...
 
What happened to IMS International?

What happened to IMS International?

I have owned an IMS 5000SX since 1981 and am working on restoring it. I bought mine in Hong Kong and they were also sold in Australia.

IMS was last heard of under the name of "LS Technologies" (see brief reference in Herb Johnson's retrotechnology archive). The "I" in IMS is for "industrial" and I was told their main sales, when they were in California, were to industrial including marine environments for control and business applications needing supposedly rugged gear.

Google search on LS Technologies shows up a few side-street repair shops but also a German computer-controlled machine tool company. Possibly it was they who bought IMS International? Would make sense. Much of the late-80s IMS material and collections seem to be in found in Germany. Through the '80s the company pushed multi-user Turbodos and M/PM rather than taking the PC single-user office-machine or personal computer route.
 
IMS Real history

IMS Real history

Yesterday I was having a guess, but it bothered me enough that I have now sleuthed it right down to the present day.

It's nothing to do with Germany after all!

IMS was acquired about 1983 by L/F Technologies. The only name I have found representing L/F is Al Fiegehen - maybe his name is the F, or even both the L and the F! L/F Technologies operated from the same premises at the airport at Carson City, Nevada, as IMS had used.

They specialised in multi-user TurboDos. Through the mid-80s they offered both Z80 and 8086 versions - not sure when they moved off S-100 though.

By 1988 they had changed their name again, to Cubix Corporation. Cubix produced multi-user systems running Unix Sys3 on Intel 80386. The company is still in business, now producing blade servers. See http://www.cubix.com.
 
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