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| Industry | Electronics |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1983; 42 years ago (1983) |
| Founder | Jack Hsiao Nan Tseng |
| Defunct | 1998 (1998) |
| Fate | Merged with Cell Pathways |
| Headquarters | , United States |
| Website | tseng.com at theWayback Machine (archived 1998-07-03) |
Tseng Laboratories, Inc. (also known asTseng Labs orTLI) was a maker ofgraphics chips and controllers forIBM PC compatibles, based inNewtown, Pennsylvania, and founded by Jack Hsiao Nan Tseng.
Founded in 1983, Tseng Labs' first product was aZ80 SoftCard designed to allow IBM PCs to run theCP/M Operating System. When anOEM deal for that product was cancelled, TLI introduced a combination multifunction and graphics, calledUltrapak, which upgradedIBM PC andXT-compatible computers with some features of an IBM AT.[1] Ultrapak also foreshadowed Tseng Labs penchant for enhancing graphics - by providingIBM Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA) andHercules Graphics Card (HGC) compatibility along with their own special 132 column text modes. These extended text modes created a successful niche for TLI - the cards were popularly used by corporations for PCs that also emulatedmainframe terminals that displayed 132 columns. TheUltraPAK Short (a graphics-only version of UltraPAK) was the base design for theDFIMG-150, which was reported to be the best selling MDA/HGC compatible card of all time.
Future Tseng products continued to push beyond mere IBM compatibility.ColorPAK - the company'sCGA-compatible product - offered 'high resolution' 400 line graphics in 1985. TheEVA andEVA/480 products of 1986 were the first recorded instances of a graphics chip company extending the IBMregister set. EVA products enabled 130 more lines of graphics (640x480) than IBMEGA, as well as advanced features likehardware accelerated windowing, panning, and zooming.
Tseng migrated from a retail/commercial board supplier to OEM sales of their chips. Ultimately, Tseng Labs VGA controllers were found in PCs from major system and board companies includingCompaq,Dell,IBM,NEC,STB Systems,Diamond Multimedia and several major Taiwanese add-in brands.[citation needed]
Tseng's best-known products were the Tseng Labs ET3000,Tseng Labs ET4000 and Tseng Labs ET6000VGA-compatible graphics chips, which were highly popular between 1990 and 1995 (the era ofWindows 3.x). The company's ET4000 family was noteworthy for unusually fast host-interface (ISA) throughput, despite a conventionalDRAMframebuffer.[2]
TLI was responsible for many breakthroughs in graphics common in today’s mainstream including extended register sets, packed pixel8,15, 16, and24-bit color modes, the firstlocal bus graphics designs, the first integrated local bus controller, and Image Memory Access (IMA)- a high-speedasynchronous input for video or graphics into the display buffer.
Using IMA bus, Tseng created the category of mainstream motion video accelerator with a series of video image processing circuits, branded VIPeR. VIPeR chips provided relatively high quality live and computer generated video. The chips were used in on high-end video solutions from companies likeMatrox and Jazz Multimedia. Competitors integrated less elegantalgorithms inside their mainstream graphics controllers - a trend Tseng followed with its latter generation of chips.
Tseng was a victim of the graphics cardshakeout of the mid-1990s, losing market share toS3 Graphics andATI Technologies.Tseng was especially late to integrate aRAMDAC into its product-line, not succeeding until the ET6000. In the later years of the ET4000's lifetime, the lack of an integrated RAMDAC severely hurt Tseng's competitiveness.
Struggling to source adequate supplies of memory for their updated cards, and lacking the funds to complete development of a modern integrated 3D engine (the ET6300), the board decided to abandon plans to ship a next generation part, and chose instead to preserve the cash pile, and seek abuyout instead.
This strategy eventually resulted in the company’s engineers and graphics expertise being purchased by ATI (now a part ofAMD) in December 1997.[3] Tseng's management chose to use the proceeds of the sale, along with the existing cash reserves, to invest in a start-up, and merged the company withpharmaceutical company Cell Pathways in 1998.[4] The latter was acquired byOSI Pharmaceuticals in 2003.[5]
