Re: Applied Ingenuity card?

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Joe B. wrote:

>I'm not sure what kind of card this is, but figured somebody out here 
>might know.  It is an Applied Ingenuity P/N 101189 card, with a 40-pin 
>connector (HD controller?).  The only chips on it are:
>  a 74LS245 (8-bit buffer)
>  a 74LS175 (flip-flops)
>  a PAL chip
>  a 27PC64 (PROM)
>
>It also has a resistor/LED combo connected to pin 19 of the connector. 
>So, is it an HD controller?  If so, is it IDE, or some proprietary? 
>Thanks for your help.

Dollars to donuts it's their IDE controller.  I think it was this internal
Vulcan-like drive that got Applied Engineering really upset with them.

AE was making a lot of money on the marked-up Vulcans, but they
couldn't go after AI on any IP issue, since the technology of the Vulcan
was pretty vanilla.  So they took them on for trademark infringement,
since "Applied Ingenuity" is so similar to "Applied Engineering".

I don't know for sure, but I always suspected that the principals at
AI knew the AE folks--maybe once worked there or something--and
decided to take a run at them by not marking things up as much.
In short, I think it was a grudge match (like Zip and Rocket), but
that's just a guess.  ;-)

-michael

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