Mission Cyrus Ltd, the Canadian would-be Sparcstation clone-builder, is effectively out of business, having failed to put a deal together with either of the multi-billion dollar European conglomerates it was hoping would salvage it from financial ruin. The company, reduced to a mere shell with only a skeleton staff left to answer phones and open mail, is still limping along protected from its creditors until October 9 by the Canadian equivalent of America’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. But any thoughts of eventually bringing out a Sparc box have long since vanished, according to caretaker manager Bahman Sanii, formerly responsible for operations. The best the company can hope for at this point, he said, is structuring a takeover deal with a local Vancouver computer maker interested in some of Mission’s 80386 and 80486 personal computers and its Micro Channel licence with IBM. Canii did not identify the firm but described it as an OEM customer. Mission Cyrus got into difficulty earlier this year when its backers pulled out of a promised round of financing. Following this its lead investor, Huntingdon, UK-based Mission Electronics Ltd, which had continued to underwrite its activities, finally decided it was costing too much and cut it off.
