by muzza2009 on Tue Jul 06, 2010 11:45 pm
I worked at MDL from 1982/84
John Lovelock a consulting engineer, he ran practice at large house on corner of Manukau Road and Pah Road (at Greenwoods Corner); said practice occuied the upper floor, MDL the ground floor.
MDL moved closer to New Market, and then back to Epsom (near Sanitarium).
Primary agent of Epson MX-80 dot-matrix printers (they came in by the truckload - very popular)
California Computer Systems (CCS) S-100 bus cards, with either Shugart 8" floppies, then MPI 5.25"). CP/M OS. S-100 chassis' and power supplies were locally made, and went through a number of changes.
Chief engineer a seriously talented bloke called Ron Sykes.. he nailed the single user CP/M build, and ironed out the bugs to get MP/M working on a huge S-100 frame. MDL leveraged a software company to target the medical market on newer smaller hardware... MDX-6?
Some graduates from Auckland Varsity joined up, just before I left (to work with TAB) ... they had been working on a developing a home PC based on the 6809
Left for OZ '85, then came back for a in'87.. met up with John Lovelock... seems MDL developed an EFT/POS terminal from scratch, but the viable sales proposition to capitalise on the surge in EFT got stifled when Radio Rentals pitched a 'rent-only' version...