Mylex

Mylex Corporation was an American computer company active from 1983 to 1999. The company mainly produced peripherals and expansion cards for personal computers—chiefly the IBM Personal Computer—for the bulk of its existence, although it also produced complete motherboards. In the mid-1990s the company focused on designing and manufacturing RAID controllers, eventually cornering 75 percent of the RAID controller market. In 1999, the company was acquired by and made a subsidiary of IBM for approximately $240 million. In 2002, IBM sold their Mylex division to LSI Logic for an undisclosed amount.

History

Foundation (1983–1985)

Mylex Corporation was founded in May 1983 by Anastasios Kyriakides, a business mogul based in Miami, Florida.[1][2]

Move to California and motherboards (1985–1993)

Mylex employed 50 workers by August 1985. That year, the company was issued an extensive patent by the USPTO for a handheld scanner,[4] beginning work on a PC-compatible peripheral based on the patent around the same time. Dubbed the Text Scanner, it allowed the user to scan a line of text and have it transcribed near-instantaneously through optical character recognition. While Mylex hoped that the Text Wand would be a breakout hit and make a name for the company in the crowded personal computer market,[7][1] a sales slump in 1986 caused by IBM and Systeme pulling out orders of Mylex's other products nearly bankrupted the company instead.[9] In December 1986, Kyriakides relinquished 32 percent of his shares in Mylex to an investor group led by M. Akram Chowdry, chairman of Prime Circuit Technology of San Jose, California.[10] Immediately afterward, Kyriakides resigned as president and chairman of Mylex, his role replaced by Chowdry; Kyriakides remained on the board of directors with a remaining 10 percent stake in Mylex.[10][11]

Mylex moved their headquarters from Miami to Fremont, California, over the summer of 1987.[12] In 1988, Mylex began offering complete motherboards for IBM PCs and compatibles. These were intended as upgrades to XT- and AT-class computers whose motherboards featured Intel's 8088, Intel 8086, and 80286 processors; Mylex's boards featured Intel's newer i386, i386SX, and i486 processors.[13][14][15] Mylex's motherboards did not sell very well, and by 1991 the company's large inventory of unrealized i386 and i486 processors were rendered obsolete, contributing $800,000 to a $1.2 million net loss in the third quarter of that year, based on diminution of the chips' value combined with the cost of warehousing them. The company's net income plummeted from $2.1 million in March 1991 to $487,300 in November 1991, an 81 percent decrease; sales meanwhile increased $35.6 million to $45.7 million (a 28 percent increased) during the same period.[15]

type	Public
industry	Computer
products	Expansion cards Peripherals RAID controllers
founded	May 1983 in Miami, Florida, United States
founder	Anastasios Kyriakides
defunct	September 1999
hq location	Fremont, California, United States (1987–1999)
fate	Acquired by IBM; later acquired by LSI Logic in 2002
num employees	397 (1997, peak)

History

Foundation (1983–1985)

Move to California and motherboards (1985–1993)

RAID controllers (1993–1999)

Sale to IBM and LSI Logic (1999–2002)

External links

References