Scion -- History
In 1978, Scion developed its first video
board for the S-100 bus. Since then they have made video boards for every major
bus architecture, including the Multibus, NuBus, and the current industry
standard, the PCI bus. The company is one of the few S-100 board companies on
this list that has survived and done well over the last 30+ years. Their
products today are focused on image display and capture boards for the highly
technical scientific and commercial markets. Recently Scion expanded its product
line into digital imaging with the introduction of the CFW-1310 series of
digital cameras.
All Scion products are now developed and manufactured in Frederick, Maryland
where the company itself is located. In the early 80's they were located in
Reston, VA. You can visit their web site
here.
James Babcock, who was a technician at SCION Corporation in the early
80's and worked on the Microangelo board and its successor the MA520
has provided the following update:
SCION was renamed from the company "Micro Diversions". Micro Diversions
started business in 1978 and were located in Tysons Corner, VA. In 1981 the
company moved to Reston, VA and was renamed SCION Corporation. As Micro
Diversions, the company developed and marketed a product called
"screen splitter".
Screen Splitter: A text only video card whose visual memory was mapped to
the S-100 memory address space. Supplied with a software library called
"WordSmith", the screen could be 'split' into separate visual areas.
Although visible as text only, this is a primitive design similar to the
current Windows program.
They also made a product called Frame Grabber -- the board could freeze
a single frame from a video signal and digitize it. The board was a
multi-layer S-100 format.
This page was last modified
on
02/20/2011