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Cardco
CARDCO was a computer peripheral company during the 1980s in Wichita, Kansas, United States.
CARDCO was well known in the Commodore 64 and VIC-20 community because of advertisements in numerous issues of Compute! magazine and availability of their products at large retailers.
There were severe shortcomings of early Commodore printers, so CARDCO created the Card Print A (C/?A) printer interface that emulated Commodore printers by converting the Commodore-style IEEE-488 serial interface to a Centronics printer port to allow numerous 3rd-party printers to be connected to a Commodore 64 or VIC-20, such as Epson, Okidata, C. Itoh.
A second model, a version that supported printer graphics was released called the Card Print +G (C/?+G), supported printing Commodore graphic characters using ESC/P escape codes.
CARDCO released additional enhancements, including a model with RS-232 output, and shipped a total over two million printer interfaces.
CARDCO, Inc
300 South Topeka
Wichita, KS 67202
USA
Year Founded: 1982
Year Defunct: 1989
CARDCO provided 'Commodore-ready' computer accessories that will enhance you utilization of Commodore-64 and VIC-20 Computers, increasing their capability, and add to your enjoyment and skill. AND, they're available for use with other personal computers, too. At least, that was the original company slogan.
Cardco was originally started by two very unlikely partners. Ed Lippert a Disco Disc Jockey from Chicago and Breck Ricketts a young self taught electronics technician from Wichita, Kansas.
Ed was a disc-jockey at a lot of the top Disco Clubs on Rush Street Chicago. He was fondly known in the disc jockey world as EJ the DJ. Ed is a high energy person with the ability to sell anything.
While Breck was the son of one of the top Automobile Alternator & Generator shops in Wichita, Kansas called Ricketts Rebuilders.
Growing up Brecks life took a turn because he liked going into an electronic company called Lloyd's Electronics Inc. at 220 W Harry St. in Wichita, KS. The owner of the company liked the young boy that was always coming into the shop and started teaching him more about the electronic world. Brecks curious nature in how things worked turned him into an electronic genius in a very short time.
The Cardco Company started as a garage operation then with 4 employees and expanded rapidly into a large company almost overnight. Before they all knew it orders were pouring in from Sears, Kmart, and Computer businesses from all over the world. With the rapid growth came uncontrollable pitfalls, Unions, UL, FCC certifications in addition to keeping up with the ever changing demand of the electronics world. The company had grown too fast to quick to keep up which was eventfully the downfall.
Breck designed almost all of the products that were sold by Cardco. He also developed a Apple emulator that could duplicate the running system of a Apple computer without using the Apple's ROM.
Breck also is the one who put the special code that would sometimes print out when using the printer interfaces such as the +G and the G-WIZ interfaces. The code would print out a Jackie this one is for you love Breck. At the time the code was embedded Jackie was Brecks girlfriend and later she became his wife. It was truly a love story right out of the story books. The minute Breck saw her he was head over heels in love.
Eventually, Cardco folded and the rights to manufacture their C64 products were sold to Supra. Founder Ed Lippert went on to found C-Ltd. also in Wichita.
CARDCO was well known in the Commodore 64 and VIC-20 community because of advertisements in numerous issues of Compute! magazine and availability of their products at large retailers.
There were severe shortcomings of early Commodore printers, so CARDCO created the Card Print A (C/?A) printer interface that emulated Commodore printers by converting the Commodore-style IEEE-488 serial interface to a Centronics printer port to allow numerous 3rd-party printers to be connected to a Commodore 64 or VIC-20, such as Epson, Okidata, C. Itoh.
A second model, a version that supported printer graphics was released called the Card Print +G (C/?+G), supported printing Commodore graphic characters using ESC/P escape codes.
CARDCO released additional enhancements, including a model with RS-232 output, and shipped a total over two million printer interfaces.
CARDCO, Inc
300 South Topeka
Wichita, KS 67202
USA
Year Founded: 1982
Year Defunct: 1989
CARDCO provided 'Commodore-ready' computer accessories that will enhance you utilization of Commodore-64 and VIC-20 Computers, increasing their capability, and add to your enjoyment and skill. AND, they're available for use with other personal computers, too. At least, that was the original company slogan.
Cardco was originally started by two very unlikely partners. Ed Lippert a Disco Disc Jockey from Chicago and Breck Ricketts a young self taught electronics technician from Wichita, Kansas.
Ed was a disc-jockey at a lot of the top Disco Clubs on Rush Street Chicago. He was fondly known in the disc jockey world as EJ the DJ. Ed is a high energy person with the ability to sell anything.
While Breck was the son of one of the top Automobile Alternator & Generator shops in Wichita, Kansas called Ricketts Rebuilders.
Growing up Brecks life took a turn because he liked going into an electronic company called Lloyd's Electronics Inc. at 220 W Harry St. in Wichita, KS. The owner of the company liked the young boy that was always coming into the shop and started teaching him more about the electronic world. Brecks curious nature in how things worked turned him into an electronic genius in a very short time.
The Cardco Company started as a garage operation then with 4 employees and expanded rapidly into a large company almost overnight. Before they all knew it orders were pouring in from Sears, Kmart, and Computer businesses from all over the world. With the rapid growth came uncontrollable pitfalls, Unions, UL, FCC certifications in addition to keeping up with the ever changing demand of the electronics world. The company had grown too fast to quick to keep up which was eventfully the downfall.
Breck designed almost all of the products that were sold by Cardco. He also developed a Apple emulator that could duplicate the running system of a Apple computer without using the Apple's ROM.
Breck also is the one who put the special code that would sometimes print out when using the printer interfaces such as the +G and the G-WIZ interfaces. The code would print out a Jackie this one is for you love Breck. At the time the code was embedded Jackie was Brecks girlfriend and later she became his wife. It was truly a love story right out of the story books. The minute Breck saw her he was head over heels in love.
Eventually, Cardco folded and the rights to manufacture their C64 products were sold to Supra. Founder Ed Lippert went on to found C-Ltd. also in Wichita.