CARDCO
| Founder | Ed Lippert II, Breck Ricketts |
|---|---|
| Defunct | 1986 |
| Fate | Closed due to declining sales. |
| Headquarters | Wichita, Kansas , US |
| Products | computer peripherals |
CARDCO was a computer peripheral company during the 1980s in Wichita, Kansas, United States. CARDCO was well known in the Commodore 64 and Commodore VIC-20 community because of advertisements in numerous issues of Compute! magazine and availability of their products at large retailers.[1]
History[]
CARDCO was founded by Ed J. Lippert II (President / Management) and Breck Ricketts (Vice President / Engineering). It went out of business in 1986 because of the decline in sales of C64 computers.
In 1986, they formed a new company called C-Ltd that manufactured peripherals for Amiga computers, and it eventually went out of business in 1989 as the Amiga computer sales declined.
Products[]
Printer interfaces[]
There were severe shortcomings of early Commodore printers, so CARDCO created the Card Print A (C/?A) printer interface that emulated Commodore printers by converting the Commodore serial interface to a Centronics parallel printer interface to allow numerous 3rd-party printers to be connected to a Commodore 64 or VIC-20.[2]
A second model, a version that supported printer graphics was released called the Card Print +G (C/?+G), supported printing Commodore graphic characters using Epson ESC/P escape codes.
CARDCO released additional enhancements, including a model with RS-232 serial output, and shipped over two million total printer interfaces.
Common compatible printers were manufactured by Epson, Panasonic, Okidata, Star Micronics, and C. Itoh.
Cassette player interface[]
Unlike most other systems, Commodore computers could only use specialized cassette players, known as "Commodore Datasettes", to save data. CARDCO made an adaptor to work with normal cassette players.
Numpad[]
CARDCO made a numpad that plugged into both of the joystick ports on the Commodore 64.
See also[]
References[]
- ^ Compute! at the Internet Archive
- ^ "CARDCO Card Print A (C/?A) - Printer Interface For The Commodore 64 and VIC-20". Compute! (34): 251. March 1983.
External links[]
- CARDCO Manual Archive
- CARDCO Card Print A (C/?A) Printer Interface: User Manual, Addendum
- CARDCO Card Print +G (C/?+G) Printer Interface: User Manual, Supplement
- Commodore 64
- Commodore VIC-20
- Defunct companies based in Kansas
- Defunct computer hardware companies
- Electronics companies disestablished in 1986
- Commodore 64 peripheral manufacturers