After struggling as a stand-alone venture, three-year-old Echo Logic Inc has disappeared back into AT&T Co’s Bell Laboratories from whence it came. The unit is now simply known by the name FlashPort, the designation of its binary software translation technology which Apple Computer Inc has been using to move existing 68000-based Mac applications to the PowerPC. Funded by AT&T Venture Corp, Echo Logic was created back in 1991 to commercialise the technology designed by Bell Labs engineers, a development that started back in the spring of 1987. Subsequently Bell Labs licensed back the technology for internal AT&T work such as the creation of a migration path for users of the now-defunct line of AT&T 3B2 Unix machines as well as users of IBM Corp 360 and 370 and Amdahl Corp mainframes wanting to move to more modern systems. Echo Logic’s Apple activities have now been coupled with the AT&T Bell Labs work for economy’s sake at Echo’s off-site premises in New Jersey in hopes of accelerating FlashPort availability. FlashPort will continue what it has been doing and will also provide its services to Apple independent software vendors. Without recourse to source code, FlashPort can translate object code-to-object code natively, moving legacy 68000 and IBM systems to Hewlett-Packard Co, Sun Microsystems Inc, MIPS Technologies Inc, iAPX-86, RS/6000 and PowerPC machines, both the Apple and the IBM versions. Brad Burnham, who ran the Echo Logic venture has now moved over to AT&T Ventures. John Goettelmann, who managed the original FlashPort research team, is now heading up the endeavour.
