Its really a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire for Visual Technology Inc, Lowell, Massachusetts. Long established as a manufacturer of DEC- and IBM-compatible terminals, the company has voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US courts after losses of $6.2m in 1988, but intends to come out revamped as a viable X-Window company, according to president Mark Whitman, with a family of new X Terminal Display Stations waiting in the wings. By the mid-1980s, the company had lost and borrowed around $70m on the development of IBM-compatible personal computers after it took over the old Ontel company from its unlikely previous owner, the Caesar’s Palace casino operation in Las Vegas. It was very nearly acquired by Lee Data Corp at the end of 1984 – banns were posted – but the deal fell through, and it raised some cash by selling its 80286 processor design to Lee in 1985. San Francisco venture capital firm Hambrecht & Quist was called in in 1986 to do a turnaround job on the company’s business, ploughing in $12.25m over the next two years as the company tried and failed to build a new business with its ambitious high-performance Commuter MS-DOS portable computer, but it wasn’t enough to keep Visuual Technology above water. The funding group has agreed to invest another $5m in the company between now and October 15 when the reorganisation plan is put to the bankruptcy court – Whitman forsees no obstacles to the plan being approved – but it is conditional on a complete reorganisation in the company. The DEC and IBM side of the firm is to be de-emphasised, although existing customers will continue to be supported, and there are four new X terminals to be released over the coming few months. The new 19 monochrome X terminal, with between 1Mb and 4Mb memory begins shipping this week. Claimed to deliver six times the speed of the existing 640 X Display Station, it is $2,700, and the firm has extended its OEM agreement with Kubota Computer Ltd, which has already signed up for previous X Display products. A 15 monochrome version will be out in October, priced at $1,600, along with a high performance 68020-based X Terminal. Colour versions are currently under development and are to go into production in the fourth quarter.
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