Foundation (1984–1987) graphics card from 1985 Genoa Systems was founded in 1984 in
San Jose, California, as a subsidiary of the Ching Fong Investment Company, a Taiwanese holding company headquartered in the United States in
San Francisco. Genoa Systems was one of several high-tech companies that Ching Fong had founded in the early 1980s. Genoa's principal co-founder was Taiwan-born Frank C. Lin, who previously worked for
Olivetti as a senior manager. He was named Genoa's president and served that role until 1987, when he left to found
Trident Microsystems, a
fabless semiconductor company, in
Mountain View, California. Genoa's first video-related product was the Spectrum Graphics Card in fall 1985. Released for the
IBM Personal Computer and
compatibles, the Spectrum combined multiple graphics adapter standards that were previously spread across multiple cards—
CGA,
MDA,
Hercules, and
Plantronics. Genoa released an updated variant of the Spectrum only a few months later in late 1985, the Spectrum Plus, which integrated many of the discrete chips necessary to drive the disparate graphics modes into one
VLSI chip. In early 1986, they released the Spectra EGA, which
InfoWorld evaluated as closely mimicking
IBM's original
Enhanced Graphics Adapter card—down to emulating its bugs when running certain software such as
Lotus 1-2-3. In late 1986, the company released the Genoa SuperEGA board featuring their own bespoke
chipset, which extended IBM's EGA standard by adding a resolution mode capable of displaying graphics at 640 by 480 pixels. It was also backwards compatible with CGA, MDA, and Hercules. The SuperEGA chipset was the first such product on the market, with Genoa beating out their competitors
Chips and Technologies and
Video Seven. As well as selling their own board featuring the chipset, Genoa sold the chipset to other manufacturers, in volume orders. By 1986, the company had over 1,000 dealers across the globe and posted annual sales of roughly $18 million. Genoa likely coined the term
Super VGA with the release of the SuperVGA and SuperVGA HighRes boards in late 1987. Genoa was a founding member of VESA in 1988, along with
Video Seven,
STB Systems,
Paradise Systems,
Tecmar, and
NEC. In January 1989, Genoa partnered with
Western Digital (the parent company of Paradise Systems) and
Sigma Designs to invest in
Vitelic, a San Jose startup, who were planning on raising a
DRAM fabrication plant in San Francisco. In fall 1989, Genoa introduced a family of Super VGA graphics cards that were the first to offer 70 MHz
refresh rates in VGA modes. These cards were compatible only with the professional multisync
CRT monitors just coming on the market at the time but eliminated the perceived flicker that CRTs displaying 60 MHz signals tended to exhibit. The family of cards comprised the 8-bit ISA-based 6100 (with 512 KB of
VRAM); the 16-bit
ISA-based 6300 (with 256 KB of VRAM) and 6400 (with 512 KB of VRAM); and the 16-bit
MCA-based 6600 (with 512 KB of VRAM). The company began dabbling in
sound cards for PCs starting in 1994, with the release of the AudioBlitz Classic. Models in the AudioBlitz range were mostly based on
Yamaha OPL3 and
OPL4 sound chips.
Decline (1998–2002) In the last few years of its existence, Genoa moved its headquarters to
Fremont, California, changed its name to Genoa Electronics Corporation, and focused on the development of an
embedded computer marketed as an
information and
Internet appliance. Eventually realized as the Genoa Embedded Information Appliance (GEIA), it was marketed for use in kiosks in financial institutions and insurance companies, as
thin clients for schools, and as
set-top boxes for home use. The GEIA was a commercial flop, and by 2002, Genoa had folded completely. ==References==