 Company logo after a name change | |
| Founded | 1981 United States |
|---|---|
| Founders | Doug Macrae John Tylko Kevin Curran |
| Defunct | 2015 |
| Fate | Disestablished |
| Headquarters | New Bedford,Massachusetts,United States |
General Computer Corporation (GCC), laterGCC Technologies, was an American hardware and software company formed in 1981 by Doug Macrae, John Tylko,[1] and Kevin Curran.
The company began as avideo game developer and created the arcade gamesMs. Pac-Man (1982) in-house forBally MIDWAY andFood Fight (1983) as well as designing the hardware for theAtari 7800 console and many of its games.
In 1984 the company pivoted to developing home computer peripherals, such as the HyperDrive hard drive for theMacintosh 128K, and printers. GCC increasingly focussed on printers before it was disestablished in 2015.
GCC started out making mod-kits for arcade video games.Super Missile Attack was sold as an enhancement board toAtari, Inc.'sMissile Command. Atari sued, but ultimately dropped the suit and hired GCC to develop games (and stop making enhancement boards for Atari's games without permission).[2] They created an enhancement kit forPac-Man calledCrazy Otto which they sold toMidway, who in turn sold it as the sequelMs. Pac-Man;[3] they also developedJr. Pac-Man, that game's successor.
Under Atari, Inc., GCC made the original arcade gamesFood Fight,Quantum, and the unreleasedNightmare; developed theAtari 2600 versions ofMs. Pac-Man andCentipede; produced over half of theAtari 5200 cartridges; and developed the chip design for theAtari 7800, plus the first round of cartridges for that system.
In 1984, the company changed direction to make peripherals forMacintosh computers: the HyperDrive (the Mac's first internal hard drive), the WideWriter 360 large formatinkjet printer, and the Personal Laser Printer (the firstQuickDrawlaser printer). Prior to closing, the company focused exclusively on laser printers.[4]
HyperDrive was unusual because the original Macintosh did not have any internal interfaces for hard disks. It was attached directly to theCPU, and ran about seven times faster than Apple's "Hard Disk 20", an external hard disk that attached to the floppy disk port.
The HyperDrive was considered an elite upgrade at the time, though it was hobbled by Apple'sMacintosh File System, which had been designed to manage 400Kfloppy disks; as with other early Macintosh hard disks, the user had to segment the drive such that it appeared to be two or more partitions, called Drawers.
In June 1985 Apple announced that installing GCC peripherals would not violate its warranty prohibiting installing non-Apple components. GCC said that it had cultivated the relationship by providing products to Apple employees.[5] The second issue ofMacTech magazine, in January 1985, included a letter that summed up the excitement:
The BIG news is from a company called General Computer. They announced a Mac mod called HyperDrive, which is aRAM expansion to 512K, and the installation of a 10 meg hard disk with the controller INSIDE THE MACINTOSH. This allows direct booting from the hard disk, freemodem port, noserial I/O to slow things down, and no external box to carry around. Price is $2,795 on a 128K machine or $2195 on a 512K machine. They do the installation or you can buy a kit from your dealer.
In 1986 GCC shipped the HyperDrive 2000, a 20MB internal hard disk that also includes aMotorola 68881floating-point unit,[5] but the speed advantage of the HyperDrive had been negated on the newMacintosh Plus computers by Apple's inclusion of an externalSCSI port. General Computer responded with the "HyperDrive FX-20" external SCSI hard disk, but drowned in a sea of competitors that offered fast large hard disks.
General Computer changed its name to GCC Technologies and relocated toBurlington, Massachusetts. They continued to selllaser printers until 2015, at which point the company was disestablished.[6]