c
  


c
 c



 
 

At this stage I knew that XIOS was not going to survive. However the receivers had moved
into the Slough office and called all the staff in. That morning I had travelled to Slough to
see the head of department about a sale myself and Tom O¶Reilly (a good friend from the
time) 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 always
early me still am to this day. Not the first in but close to it. He came to the front entrance and
enquired as to when the execs would be in we (me and the security said) we don¶t known.

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

It was the day before pay day for all of us, we had been paid a month before we did not
expect the following to happen.

The slough office was a five story building with a central open atrium quite a pleasant office
complex at that point. The main office was on the third floor with a second open area on that
floor. The word went round for us to assemble in the main foyer on the first floor bearing
mind there are for other offices in Bristol, Manchester, London and Birmingham. They were
not present.

The receiver who I can picture and remember his name and the company. The company still
exists. 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 the
following day.

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

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

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

? 1991 id Software is founded February 1, 1991.

? 1991 BSDi is founded.
? Äc
cÄc
c BSDi or BSD Inc. was founded in 1991 by some of the leading
CSRG computer scientists. BSD/OS is a full -function, POSIX-compatible, UNIX like operating
system for the 386, 486 and Pentium architectures. BSDI believes in one -stop shopping, high levels
of integration and a product that requires payment of no external licensing fees.
? 1991 HTTP/0.9 is introduced.
? 1991 NSF opens the Internet to commercial use.
? 1991 AMD introduces the AM386 microprocessor family in March.
? 1991 Intel introduces the Intel 486SX chip in April in efforts to help bring a
lower-cost processor to the PC market selling for $258.00.
? 1991 Cell phone Lithium batteries begin being recalled in Japan after phone
explodes and burns man¶s face while talking on the phone.
? 1991 The Sega Genesis game "Zero Wing" is introduced. The phrase "All
your base are belong to us" later becomes a popular saying for computer gamers
and geeks.
? 1991 Symantec releases Norton anti-virus software.
? 1991 The programming language FORTRAN 90 is created.
‘ Short for ÿ 
!"! , ÿ#"#$ 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 and
is still used today. Below is a brief history of FORTRAN.
? 1991 Following its decision not to develop operating systems cooperatively
with IBM, Microsoft changes the name of OS/2 to Windows NT.
? 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 tools
needed to meet the MPC standards.
? 1991 Pretty Good Privacy more commonly known as PGP a public key used
for encryption is released as Freeware by Philip Zimmerman.
? 1991 The computer Monkey Virus is first discovered in Edmonton, Canada.
? 1991 The domain microsoft.com comes online May 2, 1991.
? 1991 Apple introduces System 7 operating system May 13, 1991.
? 1991 The DLT tape drive is released as a very reliable, high-speed and high-
capacity tape drive solution.
? 1991 The Enhanced Parallel Port (EPP) is developed by Intel, Xircom and
Zenith Data Systems.
? 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.
? 1991 MS-DOS 5.0 was released June, 1991.
? 1991 The World Wide Web is launched to the public August 6,
? 1991 Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at the European Partial Physics Laboratory
(CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland develops the Web as a research tool.
? 1991 Linux is introduced by Linus Torvald in August 25, 1991.
? 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 the
computer's operating system (OS). His P C used MS-DOS (the disk operating system from
Microsoft Corp.), but Torvalds preferred the UNIX operating system he had used on the university's
computers. 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 years
later, developed into what many observers saw as a genuine threat to mighty Microsoft and its
seemingly ubiquitous Windows OS. By 1999 Torvalds becomes a cult hero to a devoted band of
computer users.