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A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY
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In 1973,
I left Bell Northern Research to begin a small business.
At first, Tarot Electronics survived on consulting
, the design and prototype construction of small modules and custom interfaces,
and on the preparation of PCB master artwork. |
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In 1974, I was joined by my husband, Frank Tait, and we designed, MIMIC®
a Mutable InterfaceTM
based on the Intel 8008 microprocessor, which had just been introduced.
Our initial boards were built with preproduction chips supplied by Microsystems
International Limited. |
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As our business developed, the demands on the processor rapidly outgrew
its capabilities. After a thorough evaluation of the competitors,
we switched to Intel's new improved microprocessor, the 8080, with an immediate
redesign of the MIMIC boards. |
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Shortly after the design of the 8080 board was finished, we discovered
that, when coupled with the MicroTerminalTM
and our tiny, extensible operating system,  ProcessTM,
it made a useful and inexpensive one-board computer, so we offered it at
a reasonable price to the membership of the newly formed Ottawa Computer
Group. It was accepted with enthusiasm, and used by the purchasers
as a personal computer. We
sold several hundred of these, beginning in April, 1977. |
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In 1977, I presented a paper, "The Bedroom Computer,"
to the IEEC&E, describing the MIMIC in a minimum,
portable configuration, which was, essentially a personal computer. |
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In my work at Systemhouse, I discovered that the
MIMIC boards were readily adaptable to effective multiprocessor configurations.
With very little modification, nine 8080 CPUs, joined via the MIMIC bus
and a PDP 11, were made to serve an Analytical Plotter. |
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In 1978, while continuing to work with Tarot, I began a new business, Symbionics,
as an opportunity to develop some unusual designs. Symbionics continued
to support the MIMIC system, and my design of a MC68000-based board included
the necessary interfacing to allow the 68000 to work efficiently with the
8080s already installed. The first use of the board was intended
to serve a real time graphics data acquisition system. |
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In 1983, when I moved to the U.S. and retired, further development ceased,
but MIMICs still in service continue to be useful to their owners. |
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