I had a lot of fun researching this company. Every once in a while, I stumble upon a company that has quite a story.
Parasitic Engineering was founded by “two Oakland, California hobbyists” in 1975. Earlier that year, MITS had released a 4K memory board for the Altair. (At the time, the Altair was very popular among computer hobbyists.) Unfortunately, the boards just didn’t work. Ed Roberts, the founder and president of MITS, would not admit there was a problem and “brooked no complaints”.
In response to the faulty memory boards, an unemployed member of the Homebrew Computer Club, Bob Marsh, decided to start a company to make boards that worked. (The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist club, who members included Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, George Morrow, Adam Osborne, Jerry Lawson, and other men who would go on to lay the foundation of the PC industry.)
Roberts was not happy. MITS was making very little money on the Altair and the memory boards were a way to generate some badly needed revenue. For Roberts this was war. He decided to tie the price of the BASIC language, which was very popular at the time, to the memory boards. If you bought a memory board, BASIC cost $150. But if you wanted to buy just BASIC, you’d have to shell out $500. At the time, an Altair cost $439 as a kit or $621 assembled.
According to Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine (a must read), potential customers did not take kindly to this kind of treatment. They saw “the 4K boards as worthless and BASIC overpriced”. The result: the hobbyists made their own version of BASIC and shared it for free. “By the end of 1975, most copies of BASIC in use on Altair computer were pirated.” (Side note: This was back in a day when the internet was not a thing and “always online” was a twinkle in the devil’s eye.)
Roberts responded in the “Letter from the President” second of the MITS’ newsletter dated October 1975. Here is a relevant section:
Comment : MITS should give BASIC to its customers.
Answer : Wrong. We made a $180,000 royalty committment to Micro Soft in order to have BASIC available to our customers. MITS makes essentially no profit on BASIC. It is done as a service to our customers. The BASIC we supply has universally been accepted as nothing short of fantastic and has allowed Altair customers to be literally years ahead of where they would have been without this software. Contrary to some opinions, software developments are expensive and the people who do these developments feel that they should be paid for their efforts, I agree. It is irrevelent whether software is developed to run on a large IBM computer or the Altair, it costs money. We are selling the BASIC at 1/10 to 1/100 the price large computer companies would get for a similar package, but we are still taking gas. Anyone who would like to argue this point, should feel free to call me at MITS. Anyone who is using a stolen copy of MITS BASIC should identify himself for what he is, a thief.
Recently a number of parasite companies have appeared. These companies are in a tough position. They must attack us for new business but at the same time they are dependent on our product for their survival. This has resulted in a good bit of nonsensical rheotoric and advertising. We are confident that most of our customers see through the nonsense, but a few customers have attacked MITS for the failure of a competitor to deliver or for the failure of a competitor’s product to operate properly. We have more than enough of our own problems to worry about without getting involved with competitor’s problems. Therefore, I will state again that we stand behind all MITS products and systems. We will do whatever is necessary to make these systems function properly if they haven’t been abused by the owner. But if you use non-MITS products, any problems that arise are between you and your vendor.
(Update: Fellow Substacker Bradford Morgan White wrote an in depth look at MITS. Check it out.)
Hobbyist Howard Fulmer read that statement. He had been planning to start a company to make accessories for the Altair. His first thought was to name the company Symbiotic Engineering. However, he changed his mind because he didn’t want people to think confuse his company with the Symbionese Liberation Army. (The SLA was a far-left militant group that had killed a school superintendent and kidnapped Patty Hearst. Most of the members has died in a shoot out with the LAPD in early 1975.) He instead picked the name Parasitic Engineering.
The company’s first product was a clock controller board for the Altair. They followed this up with an improved power supply for the Altair. In 1977, Parasitic Engineering teamed up with George Morrow, another Altair accessory maker, to create their own computer system: the Equinox 100. Unfortunately, the Intel 8080 that powered the system was being overshadowed by the Zilog Z80. Sales were not great.
The Equinox might not have sold well, but the hardware was an improvement on similar systems. It used the S-100 bus introduced by the Altair, but with a number of improvement to make it more robust. Fulmer and Morrow later joined a committee to create a standard specification for the S-100. Roberts was invited to join the committee, but decline believing that MITS alone should determine the future of the S-100 bus. You can find the committee’s proposed specs here and here.
In 1979, Parasitic pivoted to make products for the TRS-80, starting with the Maxi-Disk floppy drive system. Eventually, the company was dissolved in 1982. According to Wikipedia, Philip H. Dorn of Datamation postulated that after the release of the IBM PC, hobbyist companies were unable to keep up with demand.
David H.Ahl attended the first West Coast Computer Faire in 1977 and interviewed the two Parasitic Engineering founders.
Here’s Howard Fullmer and Gene Nardi of Parasitic Engineering. (Parasitic is showing their Equinox 1 00 computer system for the first time here.)
Ahl: What do you think of the show?
Fullmer: It’s incredible, all the people we’ve had here.
Ahl: Every time I’ve been past your booth there have been at least five people around it and I’ve had a heck of a time getting in to see your system.
Fullmer: We really haven’t had that much time to observe because we’ve spent all of our time over there talking to people.
Ahl: What kind of people are you finding are interested in your system or what kind of people are you meeting here in general?
Fullmer: Well, of course, all the dealers are interested in our new system, but also, we’ve met a lot of people who have never thought about computers and just came by to see them. They show a lot of interest in how to program one of these— what does all this software mean and what do I need to get going? I want to write a simple inventory package for my business— how do I go about doing that? So, small-business people, hobbyists and a lot of curious novices. But just about everyone here is interested in a personal computer, deeply interested.
Ahl: Are people going to buy this year or consider?
Fullmer: I think this is a faire of people who want to do something now— they’re not all waiting for the $500 Commodore. They’re a lot more together than that. They understand that there are a whole lot of different ways to go and they’re looking at all of the ways.
Ahl: Are you having a good reception to your new system?
Fullmer: Oh absolutely.
Ahl: Do you think you’re really going to get off the ground?
Fullmer: Yes. The kind of comments we’ve overheard are people saying, “You’ve got to get over and see that one!”
Ahl: So you think it’s going to be a different kind of magnitude than selling power supplies and clock-fix kits.
Nardi: Yes, definitely!
Ahl: Can your production line keep up?
Nardi: Ask me after six months, but we obviously think we can or we wouldn’t be doing it.
Fullmer: We’ve built the company from literally nothing and it’s been just fantastic.
Ahl: You’re going to continue to call it Parasitic Engineering, right? Even though you’re not parasites anymore.
Fullmer: Well, we thought we’d call it the Equinox 100 by Parasitic Engineering so we can go either way.
Ahl: Thanks, and good luck!
In November 1980, Fullmer wrote a letter to the editor of 80 US Journal. In it, he makes several statements about the company:
“We manufacture our own circuit boards from our own proprietary designs. Our boards have NO extra wires Our boards provide the lowest error rate and the highest reliability currently available for the Model I (TRS-80).
…
Parasitic Engineering Inc. operationally demonstrated the FIRST system that used 8” floppy disk drives and Standard CP/M on the TRS-80 Model I at the Fourth West Coast Computer Faire in May 1979.
4. In July 1979 Parasitic Engineering Inc. shipped the FIRST system that ran Standard CP/M and TRS DOS on 8” drives on the Model I.
Parasitic Engineering Inc. believes that we have shipped more 8” floppy disk systems than any other company. We have satisfied customers all over the world. Many of our customers have given us permission for us to use them as references to verify the quality of Parasitic Engineering’s products and service.
…
Common sense dictates that we could not still be in business if we held deposits for a year or never shipped complete working Maxi-Disk systems. The company that became Parasitic Engineering Inc. was founded over 5 1 /2 years ago. The Maxi-Disk is not our first product, but rather it is the latest in a line of innovative high performance computer products that have changed the face of the microcomputing industry.”
Here are the system specs based on the Equinox 100 brochure:
Basic Controls: HALT, RUN & RESET
Access: EXAMINE & DEPOSIT for all CPU registers (individual or pairs), all memory locations, and all I/O devices
Special Features: SINGLE STEP & PROGRAMMABLE SLOW-STEP™ while monitoring any CPU register (individual or pairs), any memory location, and any I/O device. Range: 1-64,000/min.
Fan with fingerguard
2 100-pin edge connectors
19 pairs of card guides
Power keyswitch with 2 keys
Detachable line cord
High performance CPU/front-panel board
20-slot fully shielded and actively terminated bus-board
Constant voltage 20-amp power supply
All-aluminum cabinet with sliding top and bottom and smoked plexiglass front
Swing-open top for cabinet
Wiring channel
Tilt-up stand
Carrying handle
Cord storage
Complete edge connector set
4K memory board
8K memory board
General purpose/cassette I/O board
The system was first announced in the May/June 1977 issue of Creative Computing. (For some reason, the paragraph mentions a CPU instead of a computer.)
“Watch for a terrific new CPU to be produced by a joint venture between Parasitic Engineering and George Morrow of Morrow’s Stuff. In contrast to the simple no control or one control front panel, this goes the other way. From the front panel you’ll be able to examine and deposit in all registers, single step, slow step, and look at any I/O port and alter it. Given Parasitic’s involvement, we can expect a BIG power supply.”
The Equinox 100 was mentioned in the August 2, 1977 issue of Electronic Design:
8080-based micro has octal front panel
The Equinox 100, an under-$700 8080-based microcomputer kit, features a 12-pad keyboard and numeric 7-segment LED display. Addresses and data on the S-100 bus computer are displayed in octal on the LEDs. The front-panel keyboard and display lets the operator monitor or alter any register, register pair, memory location or I/O device in the system. Equinox 100 can single-step through programs, step slowly at a programmable rate from 1 to 64-k steps per minute, or Halt at predetermined points without “going to sleep.” Inside the microcomputer is a 20-slot busboard which is fully shielded by interlaced ground lines and has active termination on every bus line.
The September/October 1977 Creative Computing had a similar announcement:
PARASITIC ENGINEERING EQUINOX 100
Offering intelligent front panel the Equinox 100 8080-based mainframe kit deceptively simple, with only keyboard and LED display. Working with the front-panel keyboard and display, the operator can monitor alter any register, register pair, memory location I/O device the system. Equinox 100 single-step through programs, slow-step programmable rate from 64K steps per minute, HALT predetermined points without “going sleep.”
The Equinox 100 also features 20-slot busboard which fully shielded interlaced ground lines connected ground planes, and has active termination every bus line. The busboard, integrated CPU/console board and optional and memory boards are supplied Morrow’s Micro-Stuff Berkeley, California. The mainframe kit under $700.
Have you ever used an Equinox 100? Tell us about it in the comments below.