Early PC Products - Taiwan

CDCL, the sister company of FTDI, was established in 1986. It began as an Electronics Consultancy specialising in PC motherboards and cards - and at the time there was a considerable market for these skills in Taiwan.

Getting a foothold in the Taiwanese market was achieved by Fred Dart, the company's founder, visiting potential customers in Taiwan - with a sample board design in one hand and a phrase book in the other. This led to a variety of interesting developments for a range of customers over several years.

• 1987 - designed one of the first 16MHz 80286 based motherboards for Diamond Flower Industries (DFI)
• 1988 - designed enhanced ASIC based version of this board, again for DFI
• 1988 - designed 16/20 Mhz 80386SX based motherboard for Chaintech Co.
• Followed this with an ASIC cost reduction of this board
• 1989 - designed 80386 protected mode EMS driver - for Elitegroup (ECS) of Taiwan
• Designed a 33 Mhz 80386 board with cache memory
• 1990 - designed 80386SX "Twinstar" chip set for United Microelectronics Corp (UMC), Taiwan's largest semiconductor manufacturer semiconductor manufacturer - UMC