If the Altair was the first personal computer, the IMSAI was the second. IMSAI's management team pushed the 8088 microprocessor, 8-inch disk drives, and the other technology of the late 1970s for all it was worth, doing their best to convince small business owners that they could run their businesses with the primitive devices. A number of customers were eager to believe it, and some really did use the machines for some amazing purposes. Eventually, though, the company pushed too hard and too fast and went bankrupt.
In the smoke and ashes, it was hardly noticed that a technician who had spent many months repairing the faulty machines had quietly bought up much of the inventory and, surprisingly, the name. Soon Todd Fisher and his partner and wife Nancy Freitas were selling rebuilt, tested IMSAIs. When the movie War Games came out, the teenaged hacker hero was using a Fisher-Freitas IMSAI. Quite a coup for the mom-and-pop operation. They moved their business to the Sacramento area in early 1984 and had a couple more years of success servicing and repairing the IMSAI VDP-80 machines and Persci disk drives, some of which were shipped to them from Australia, Germany, and even Cousteau's "Calypso." Then, in 1986, Todd started pursuing other opportunities that grew out of some inventions he came up with, and it wasn't until this year that IMSAI became important in his life again.
"I got a number of e-mails in the early part of this year," Todd wrote me recently, "from folks who wanted to know about me, IMSAI, the War Games IMSAI, and (strangely) availability of IMSAI parts. When I saw that old IMSAIs were going for over $3000 on eBay, and that there was a demand for parts for these machines, I decided to bring the IMSAI back, along with the support and add-ons that made these early machines so fascinating to work with."
In addition to making the original sheet metal and front panels available for the restorers and hobbyists, Todd is actually manufacturing IMSAIs for sale. His market is in some ways very different from the original IMSAIs, even when it's the same people. "I think," Todd says, "that the PC brought an end to that close relationship that 'hackers' (in the old sense of the meaning) had between the hardware and software. I hope to bring back a lost thrill of computing."
Todd's web site is at http://imsai.net/. By the way, he's known on the site as Thomas Fisher, but I first met him some 15 years ago as Todd, and I can't not use that name.
-- M.S.
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