Also, I kind of wish Microsoft Bob failed a little harder— the agentic stuff I'm hearing about these days sounds like the kind of software assistants they tried in the 90s, and I fear they have the same likelihood of poor execution.
VAX 9000, OS/2 2.0, OS/2 Warp 3, OpenDoc, Kaleida, Apple Newton, Pippin, 3DO, Philips CD-i, Sega 32X, Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguar, Amiga CD32…
They borrowed features from HPFS.
- Virtual Boy, Atari Lynx,
Hardware:
- AMD Interwave. practically ruined Gravis and left us with years of Creative gobbling up any competitor i.e. Ensoniq, Aureal... FFS we had to wait for VIA to make something competitive to Creative's offerings, outside of 3-ish beautiful Cirrus Logic 4624/4630 cards, before the Envy24 became a thing.
- Speaking of Cirrus Logic, The Laguna CL-GD546X series of chips; those things used RDRAM in the mid-90s and it contributed to Cirrus exiting the video market.
- Speaking of Creative, the 3D Blaster VLB. They exist, (heck IDEK if the original rebel moon came any other way,) but they are rare as hell which means they probably flopped hard.
- (Kinda) the Matrox M3d (and the VideoLogic counterpart). It wasn't a terrible product in and of itself but a Riva 128 was faster (if uglier) for most cases and gave you 2D as well, and they came out around the same time. [0]
- Most 'cartridge disk' drives aside from the Zip[1]. You can possibly throw SuperDisk/HiFD into this category too.
- Intel i820 Chipset (It's 1999!). I'm not referring to the 'lemon' aspect (i.e. when an MTH was used for SDRAM, the RDRAM was reliable... AFAIK with two slots instead of 3) but in general there was almost zero uptake due to the cost of RDRAM and Intel's recalcitrance led to both AMD gaining ground as well as VIA/SiS getting opportunities to be more competitive in the chipset space (SiS 630 was cheaper than 810E and just as good for normal users, Via's Apollo Pro 133A both supported 133Mhz FSB and gave an AGP slot, as well as IDE corruption with an SBLive... I think i815 was 4-6 months after VIA stuff was selling, and remember back then 6 months was an eternity...)
Also I should note that the Saturn was mostly a flop in the US (Can't speak for EU.) but in Japan it held up well thanks to native publishers, the Saturn had a lot of great 2D games we never saw here, (thanks to the same guy that ironically caused the relative dearth of good RPGs for the PS1 before he moved from Sony to Sega...) also the ability to play CD+G (gotta have that karaoke) and I think? it could do VCDs which were bigger over there... all that stuff helped a lot and the Saturn outsold there till around 1997 IIRC.
[0] - That said, wow, remember when 3d processors didn't even need a heatsink? I feel old...
[1] - Zip had reliability problems, but certainly was not a flop.
I just had to check to see if you meant 3DO Blaster and not just 3D Blaster. I'd imagine both are very rare.
And we had VGA passthrough cables, because 2D rendering was still taken care of by a discrete card.
They were a company that thrived on a combination of clever mis-marketing [0] and poor reseller treatment [1]. Their actions likely hurt the evolution of computer audio due to the capture of various patents and companies that were actually innovating (Ensoniq being the big one.) I mean FFS it took VIA and and upstart to finally raise the bar [2] in a meaningful way, and the overall lack of competition left Creative ill-prepared to handle Azalia.
[0] - i.e. Audigy settlement.
[1] - When I worked at a computer shop, around 2001 we established a rule, 'no creative product under 50$ retail will be worth the cost of trying to RMA it'. If an SBLive or 52x CD drive came in bad we'd try but if it didn't get through on first go you'd wind up in a loop where the labor time wasn't worth replacing one. Which makes me extra disgusted because that's what everyone does now with actual end consumers.
[2] - That said, that VIA/IC Ensemble did the Envy24 thing when they did is interesting, at least in the context of the XBox 360 using an SIS 'Southbridge'. Makes me wonder if they were being bold to get the bid instead?
I'm willing to 'write-off' most early proprietary API cards, OTOH 3d Blaster VLB was so memory holed that if it wasn't for LGR I'd thought it was a Mandela effect hallucination...
I knew a couple people who had one and it was really handy, nothing comparable (except switching actual hard disks) existed, for a brief moment in time - must have been around 1998-99, no ubiquitous USB sticks, no CDRW yet (only CDR, at 5 bucks a piece).
Us plebs had to make do with 100MB parallel port zip drives.
> no CDRW yet (only CDR, at 5 bucks a piece).
IIRC Jaz cartridges were expensive back then, 100$ a pop. Launch price of 100$, back then 500$ could buy you a car that might last through an oil change or two. [1]
That said, The Castlewood Orb was a far more interesting piece of machinery due to capacity/cost. I have never seen one, but I do have a SyJet somewhere that I never hooked up to a PC [2]
[0] - FWIW the Jaz in question was a SCSI model with parallel port adapter. Not sure if it makes a difference...
[1] - It took a long time to fully reclaim my dad's confidence in purchase suggestions, wasn't finally conquered till a year after he ditched a problematic Chrysler Sebring for a Chevrolet Malibu (at which point he said I was glad I suggested it. Which I'm eternally grateful for...)
[2] - Got it used cheap way back when, I preferred SCSI CDRWs and thus had at least one competent Adaptec card for the task and a colleague was like 'hey since you can use it...'
> When General Magic finally shipped in 1994 — under the threat of Apple’s Newton — they hadn’t made the Pocket Crystal that Porat first dreamed of in 1989. Instead, they released something they called the Sony Magic Link. It weighed 1.5 lbs (0.68 kg) and was priced at US$800 (US$1560 in 2022 dollars). It offered futuristic features like a touchscreen, downloadable apps and animated emojis — the first of its kind. Fadell thought it would be revolutionary — people could now carry a personal computer with them wherever they went. But nobody bought it. In the end only three to four thousand Magic Link devices were sold, and mostly to family and friends.
There's a documentary too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTdyb-RWNKo
Also, The Microsoft Network. This was a competitor to AOL that came out just as the WWW was exploding. It gave us the "MSN" abbreviation that we still see today, but otherwise disappeared without a trace.
Well, almost without a trace. Unfortunately?
The CueCat.
I'd also add Network Computers and "push technology" e.g. Pointcast.
But it was a flop.
Of course DSL and other techs took over, but it was far from a failure.
WebTV might be up there, similar for Monorail PC.
Both fairly quickly got obsoleted and any 'volume' they hoped to reach in consumer space was quickly cannibalized by similar but more profitable models (i.e. E-Machines and their steep internet contract discounts.)
Nx586 was a bit of a flop as a product on its own (even funder Compaq didnt really ship many) but overall the R&D transformed AMD when they acquired NexGen and used the second iteration of the tech for the K6.
The remote viewing is coming back though. PlayStation Portal comes to mind which is just a remote controller and screen for a PS5. It’s considerably cheaper than the full device, of course, because that would be insane if it weren’t, _Microsoft_
It was slow over 802.11b (I beta tested two of the devices).
Windows is perfectly capable of hosting multiple sessions, Microsoft just wants to charge you double the cost of a Windows license per session on a separate server tier of OS license.
Of course, it wouldn't have saved the device if Microsoft had bent their rules for themselves...