Quinn Team opened its doors in early 1980 supporting "S-100" based micro computer system hardware and software. In those days, micro computers were a hobby and a labor of love. The early adopters were largly Ham Operators or electronic engineers employed in the high-tech industries of Southern California. There was no Apple. There was no IBM PC. Micro computing was born out of a simple love for technology and an early realization that micro computers would some day become mainstream. Little did we know where it would be in just 25 years much less where it is now, some 40 years later!
Over the years we've seen and experienced much:
- The evolution of hobbiest micro-computers into serious business systems;
- The world's first retail computer store in Santa Monica, California;
- Altair, Cromemco, IMSAI, Radio Shack, Concord, Timex, on and on;
- The adoption and rapid rise of an industry with the birth of Apple, Microsoft, and the IBM PC;
- Altair, Cromemco, IMSAI, TRS-80, PET, Concord, Sinclair, Commador 64 - on and on;
- The birth of commercial OSes - Digital Research, CDOS, MS-DOS, PC-DOS, OS-2, Windows;
- The birth and growth of the Internet from a few ARPA to WWW;
Quinn Team has been there through it all:
Founded in 1985, Quinn Team provided hardware, training, installation and programming for the burgeoning personal computer market. Starting with Cromemco, the first micro-hardware based UNIX-like OS (CROMIX) in the world, we installed and supported dumb terminals and dot matrix printers. Hardware was expensive.
Custom applications demaned custom software and hardware. There was no such thing as a network. Peripherals were adaptaions of main-frame periferals. Data storage was on floppy disks only. There was not even the concept of flash memory (unless you count a Star Trek "Tricorder") A fast system was 6 MHz!
Keeping up with technology has been like finals week in college every day. Reading, learning, practicing, colaberating with colleges - just to keep up. The technologies have changed at an unpresidented speed. But over all the years and through all the change, we remain dedicated to the application of micro computers to business solutions>