Action Computer Enterprise
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer manufacturing |
| Founded | 1978 in Pasadena, California, United States |
| Founder | Herbert L. Siegel, Kwok M. Ong, Wing Chung, unnamed partner |
| Defunct | 1990 |
| Headquarters | Pasadena, California , United States |
Key people | Herbert L. Siegel (Chairman), Wing Chung (Vice President) |
| Products | Discovery 1600, Discovery 500, D/NET |
Number of employees | ~50 (mid-1980s) |
Action Computer Enterprise, Inc. (ACE) was a U.S.-based computer manufacturer operational between 1978 and 1990, recognized for introducing one of the earliest microcomputers capable of supporting multiple users simultaneously, the Discovery 1600, which debuted in 1978.
Establishment (1978–1979)
Founded in 1978 in Pasadena, California, ACE was the brainchild of Herbert L. Siegel, Kwok M. Ong, Wing Chung, and an additional unnamed partner. Siegel, Ong, and this fourth individual initially collaborated at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), while Chung and Ong formed their connection at the University of California, Berkeley. Siegel brought to the table programming skills honed through his tenure at JPL and other public sector roles, complemented by his background as a Peace Corps volunteer and a mathematics M.A. graduate from UC Berkeley. Chung, an immigrant scholar supported by an IBM Watson Fellowship and educated at UC Berkeley and Columbia University, contributed $50,000 from family resources to finance the startup.
Beginning operations in a garage owned by one of the founders, ACE rapidly grew to occupy an office in Pasadena with a workforce numbering around 30 by the early 1980s. Leadership roles saw Siegel as chairman and Chung as vice president. The company’s core strategy centered on innovating multi-user microcomputers, exemplified by its premier product, the Discovery 1600, launched in April 1979. This offering established ACE’s presence in the microcomputer market by catering to clients requiring simultaneous multi-user functionality.
Discovery 1600 and Discovery 500 (1979–1983)
The Discovery 1600 was a microcomputer based on a single-board computer (SBC) architecture utilizing an IEEE-696-compliant S-100 bus backplane. It supported one service processor card alongside up to fifteen user processor cards and additional peripheral cards adhering to the S-100 standard. The service processor managed both the bus operations and disk drive control, whereas user processor cards provided multi-user access through serial interfaces connected to video terminals. Each user card could independently operate systems such as CP/M or CP/M-86, coordinated by Discovery’s proprietary Distributed Processing Operating System (DPOS).
The principal service processor card, designated dpc-283, incorporated a Zilog Z80A CPU with 96 KB of RAM, a DMA controller, and several input/output ports. User processor options included the dpc-83U (Z80A CPU with 64–96 KB RAM and two serial ports), dpc-183 (Z80A CPU with 96 KB RAM, two serial ports, supporting secondary multiprocessing), and dpc-186 (Intel 8086 CPU featuring an optional socket for the 8087 FPU, memory ranging from 128 KB up to 1 MB, plus two serial ports). The latter two models could serve as secondary service processors enabling multiprocessing through DMA and a specialized bus connection.
The initial customer base included a tobacco company located in Thailand’s Ban Phai district; subsequent sales primarily involved banks and government agencies facilitated by Chung’s familial network. By 1983, sales had reached approximately 2,000 units of the Discovery 1600. Capitalizing on this momentum, ACE introduced the Discovery 500 in January 1983—a multi-user microcomputer maintaining the SBC-on-backplane design but limited to seven processor cards and featuring improved floppy disk drives along with hard drive support.
D/NET and dissolution (1983–1990)
By 1984, ACE's sales in mainland China reached $5 million, representing approximately one-third of the company's total global revenue. This achievement was supported by a specialized team of 25 sales and service professionals based in Hong Kong, which constituted half of ACE's entire workforce.
In an effort to stay ahead in the market, ACE introduced D/NET in 1983—a unified hardware and software solution designed to support a local area network (LAN) connecting up to 10 Discovery 1600 computers along with 150 user terminals. The network operating system operated via a service processor, improving both connectivity and overall system efficiency.
During the mid-1980s, founder Wing Chung left ACE to create Universal Digital Computer Corporation (UDC) located in La Mirada, California. By 1990, ACE had discontinued its business operations.