Consultancy In May 1972,
William Millard began business individually as
IMS Associates (IMS) in the area of computer
consultancy and engineering, using his home as an office. The work done by IMS was similar to that Millard had done previously for the city and county of
San Francisco.
IMSAI 8080 In 1974, IMS was contacted by a client which wanted a "
workstation system" that could complete jobs for any
General Motors new-car dealership. IMS planned a system including a
terminal, small computer,
printer, and special software. Five of these work stations were to have common access to a
hard disk, which would be controlled by a small computer. Eventually, product development was stopped. Millard and his chief engineer Joe Killian turned to the
microprocessor. Intel had announced the 8080 chip, and compared to the 4004 to which IMS Associates had been first introduced, the 8080 looked like a "real computer". Full-scale development of the
IMSAI 8080 was put into action, and by October 1975 an ad was placed in
Popular Electronics, receiving positive reactions. IMS shipped the first IMSAI 8080 kits on 16 December 1975 and shortly after turned to fully assembled units.
Transition In 1976, as IMS had completed its transition from a consultancy firm into a manufacturing firm, the name of the company was changed to IMSAI Manufacturing Corporation.
ComputerLand The release of the
Z80 by
Zilog in 1976 quickly put an end to the dominance of 8080 machines as the new chip had an improved instruction set, could be clocked at faster speeds, and had on-chip DRAM refresh. IMSAI sales quickly plummeted and so in 1977 Millard decided to take the company through another transition, this time from a computer manufacturing company to a computer retailer. He established a chain of
franchised retail outlets, initially called Computer Shack (the name was changed to ComputerLand following legal threats from
Radio Shack). ComputerLand retailed not only IMSAI 8080s, but also computers from companies including
Apple,
North Star, and
Cromemco. The 8080 sold poorly in comparison, and IMSAI developed the
IMSAI VDP-80, an
all-in-one computer which worked poorly. Many franchise dealers refused to retail most IMSAI products except those that retained popularity including the IMSAI 8080. With most of the IMSAI resources
stripped to fund ComputerLand's expansion, and with Millard's attention diverted, IMS Associates, Inc. went into a "tailspin", The right to the word mark IMSAI expired on 2004-04-06 because Thomas Fischer did not correctly submit the required documents for renewal. ==Pop culture==