8/7/2019 Some More of AES Data XIOS Diary Then 1990

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Some More of my AES Data XIOS Diary from the 1980s & 1990's

Another snippet from 1989 to 1991

At this stage I knew that XIOS was not going to survive. However the receivers had movedinto the Slough office and called all the staff in. That morning I had travelled to Slough tosee the head of department about a sale myself and Tom OReilly (a good friend from thetime) had secured with Berkeley Power station at Old Bury on Seven.

On approaching the office quite early I saw a posh Land Rover outside the office alwaysearly me still am to this day. Not the first in but close to it. He came to the front entrance andenquired as to when the execs would be in we (me and the security said) we dont known.

Because of all the dealings with AES Data then the takeover by XIOS we knew somethingwas askew. The day progressed on but as the top brass arrived the receivers had called themto a meeting. We just sat round waiting for the axe to fall. Needles to say I said nothing aboutthe potential sale.

It was the day before pay day for all of us, we had been paid a month before we did notexpect the following to happen.

The slough office was a five story building with a central open atrium quite a pleasant officecomplex at that point. The main office was on the third floor with a second open area on thatfloor. The word went round for us to assemble in the main foyer on the first floor bearingmind there are for other offices in Bristol, Manchester, London and Birmingham. They werenot present.

The receiver who I can picture and remember his name and the company. The company stillexists. The receiver came to the third floor railings to talk down to us like a demi god from on

high to tell us that XIOS was no more but the killing bit was that we would not get paid thefollowing day.

He followed it with that if we worked for h next month while they tried to find a buyer wemight get paid. A wife two kids a mortgage didnt have much choice.

What followed was a story that I will tell another day but back to the Bristol office which hadlots of equipment. As for the sale well that didnt happen or did it!

The following are some extracts of events that happened that year taken from my notes at thetime.

y 1991 id Software is founded February 1, 1991.y 1991 BSDi is founded.

y B SDi Internet Server ( B SD/OS) BSDi or BSD Inc. was founded in 1991 by some of the leadingCSRG computer scientists. BSD/OS is a full -function, POSIX-compatible, UNIX like operatingsystem for the 386, 486 and Pentium architectures. BSDI believes in one -stop shopping, high levelsof integration and a product that requires payment of no external licensing fees.

y 1991 HTTP/0.9 is introduced.y 1991 NSF opens the Internet to commercial use.y 1991 AMD introduces the AM386 microprocessor family in March.

8/7/2019 Some More of AES Data XIOS Diary Then 1990

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y 1991 Intel introduces the Intel 486SX chip in April in efforts to help bring alower-cost processor to the PC market selling for $258.00.

y 1991 Cell phone Lithium batteries begin being recalled in Japan after phoneexplodes and burns mans face while talking on the phone.

y 1991 The Sega Genesis game "Zero Wing" is introduced. The phrase "Allyour base are belong to us" later becomes a popular saying for computer gamersand geeks.

y 1991 Symantec releases Norton anti-virus software.y 1991 The programming language FORTRAN 90 is created.o Short for F ormula Translator , F ORTRAN was one of the first programming languages. FORTRAN began

being created in 1954 by members of the IBM team, was first introduced to the public October 15, 1956 andis still used today. Below is a brief history of FORTRAN.

y 1991 Following its decision not to develop operating systems cooperativelywith IBM, Microsoft changes the name of OS/2 to Windows NT.

y 1991 Creative Labs releases a multimedia upgrade kit that includes a CD-ROM drive, the SoundBlaster Pro sound card, a MIDI kit and a variety of software applications. The kit allows IBM compatible users to obtain all toolsneeded to meet the MPC standards.

y 1991 Pretty Good Privacy more commonly known as PGP a public key usedfor encryption is released as Freeware by Philip Zimmerman.

y 1991 The computer Monkey Virus is first discovered in Edmonton, Canada.y 1991 The domain microsoft.com comes online May 2, 1991.y 1991 Apple introduces System 7 operating system May 13, 1991.y 1991 The DLT tape drive is released as a very reliable, high-speed and high-

capacity tape drive solution.y 1991 The Enhanced Parallel Port (EPP) is developed by Intel, Xircom and

Zenith Data Systems.y 1991 TrueType a scalable font is introduced and developed by Microsoft and

Apple and is used on all Apple computers and PC computers running Windows.y

1991 MS-DOS 5.0 was released June, 1991.y 1991 The World Wide Web is launched to the public August 6,y 1991 Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at the European Partial Physics Laboratory

(CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland develops the Web as a research tool.y 1991 Linux is introduced by Linus Torvald in August 25, 1991.

y In 1991 Linus Torvalds, a 21-year-old computer science student at the University of Helsinki, Fin.,having just purchased his first personal computer (PC), decided that he was not satisfied with thecomputer's operating system (OS). His P C used MS-DOS (the disk operating system fromMicrosoft Corp.), but Torvalds preferred the UNIX operating system he had used on the university'scomputers. He decided to create his own PC-based version of UNIX. Months of determined

programming work yielded the beginnings of an operating system known as Linux that, eight yearslater, developed into what many observers saw as a genuine threat to mighty Microsoft and itsseemingly ubiquitous Windows OS. By 1999 Torvalds becomes a cult hero to a devoted band of computer users.