Omnidata

Omnidata Corporation

Company type	Private
Industry	Computer hardware, Word processing equipment
Founded	December 1, 1978 (1978-12-01) in Westlake Village, California, United States
Founder	Paul Van Alstyne
Defunct	1988 (1988)
Headquarters	Westlake Village , United States
Products	Word processing systems, Omni Convertible microcomputer

Omnidata Corporation was a U.S.-based computing firm operational from 1978 until the late 1980s. The company was founded in Westlake Village, California by Paul Van Alstyne following the acquisition of his earlier venture, Wordplex, by the Canada Development Corporation. Omnidata specialized in the development and production of word processing equipment, which it distributed both directly and through reseller networks. In 1984, the company introduced the Omni Convertible, a microcomputer capable of concurrently supporting up to three distinct microprocessor architectures, including x86, m68k, Z80, and TMS9900.

History

Paul Van Alstyne established Omnidata in December 1978 after co-founding Wordplex in 1974 and leading it as president. By 1978, Wordplex had expanded to 200 employees and ranked as the second-largest word processor manufacturer after IBM before its acquisition by the Canada Development Corporation (CDC) and subsequent merger with AES Data Ltd. CDC later divested AES Wordplex to Norsk Data in 1987.

Omnidata’s initial major client was Germany’s Triumph-Adler (TA). In 1979, the company launched the Bitsy word processor series, which was partially designed by Omnidata and produced by Diehl Data Systems, a TA subsidiary. By early 1981, TA had invested substantially in Omnidata, acquiring a 46% ownership share.

The year 1980 saw Omnidata release the Omni/1 word processing system, equipped with two Shugart 5.25-inch floppy drives and a Qume daisy wheel printer, utilizing Texas Instruments’ TMS9900 processor. Later that year, the Omni/2 general-purpose microcomputer was introduced. Both models were engineered and manufactured at Omnidata’s Westlake Village site.

In April 1981, TA completed its acquisition of Omnidata, making it a wholly owned subsidiary during a time when TA was under Volkswagen AG’s ownership. Van Alstyne took charge of TA’s word processing division, managing the Royal brand in the United States and the TA brand across Europe. Subsequently, Omnidata was merged into TA’s Royal Business Machines subsidiary.

Volkswagen reorganized Triumph-Adler in January 1983, resulting in Omnidata being spun off as an independent entity once more. Following this change, Omnidata developed the Omni Convertible—a 16-bit microcomputer capable of simultaneously supporting multiple microprocessor architectures. Unveiled at the 1983 Consumer Electronics Show and released in early 1984, this system featured a Zilog Z80H dedicated to system supervision and accommodated up to three co-processor cards such as Texas Instruments’ TMS9995 (running Omnitext word processing software on Omni-DOS), Intel’s x86-based 80186 and 80286 processors, and Motorola’s 68000 CPU. This design enabled users to operate several operating systems at once including CP/M, Unix, MS-DOS, UCSD Pascal, and Xenix.

Following the introduction of the Omni Convertible, Omnidata did not bring any new products to market and allowed its trademark registration to expire by 1988.

See also

• Challenger III by Ohio Scientific, a multiprocessor computer featuring 6502, Z80, and Motorola 6800 CPUs
• Dimension 68000, a multiprocessor computer supporting up to four processors