Columbia Data Products
Columbia Data Products, Inc. (CDP) is a company which produced the first legally reverse-engineered IBM PC clones. It faltered in that market after only a few years, and later reinvented itself as a software development company. History 1976–1986: As a hardware company Columbia Data Products was founded by William Diaz in 1976 in Columbia, Maryland. In 1980, Columbia Data Products made some Z80-based computers, most notably their Commander 900 series, which had several models, some of which were multiprocessors and had graphics capabilities. CDP introduced the MPC 1600 "Multi Personal Computer", designed by David Howse, in June 1982. It was an exact functional copy of the IBM Personal Computer model 5150 except for the BIOS which was Clean room designed. IBM had published the bus and BIOS specifications, wrongly assuming that this would not be enough to facilitate unlicensed copying of the design, but be enough to encourage the add-on market. CDP advertisements stated that the MPC "can use software and hardware originally intended for the IBM Personal Computer". The "Multi" in its name hinted to the fact that it could also run the multi-user operating system MP/M-86. The MPC was the first IBM PC clone and was actually superior