Sirius Systems Technology

Sirius Systems Technology was a personal computer manufacturer in Scotts Valley, California. It was founded in 1980 by Chuck Peddle and Chris Fish, formerly of MOS Technology and capitalized by Walter Kidde Inc. In late 1982 Sirius acquired Victor Business Systems (known for its calculators and cash registers) from Kidde and changed its name to Victor Technologies. It made the Victor/Sirius series of personal computers. The company made a public stock offering in the first half of 1983, but went into Chapter 11 protection from bankruptcy before the end of 1984. The company's assets were acquired by Datatronic AB, a Swedish software company headed by Mats Gabrielsson. Gabrielsson signed a distribution deal with Kyocera, which began to supply PC clones to Victor.The Victor 9000 (distributed in the UK by British company Applied Computer Techniques as the ACT Sirius 1, and in Australia by Barson Computers as the Sirius 1) was designed by Peddle-who had also designed the first Commodore PET-and presented for the first time at the Systems show in Munich, Germany, in late 1981. Chuck Peddle used two of his Commodore contacts to set up two subsidiaries in continental Europe. David Deane (France) and Juergen Tepper (Germany) were both ex-Mannesmann Tally whom Chuck had met while negotiating an OEM deal for printers. The Victor 9000/Sirius 1 ran CP/M-86 and MS-DOS but was not a PC clone. It offered a higher resolution screen and 600K/1.2MB floppy drives. The Victor 9000 met with significant success in Europe, as IBM delayed the European launch of its PC for 18 months giving time for the Sirius to build up a commanding lead for a short time. ACT outsold the Sirius/Victor subsidiaries and also led the way in proving that application software was the key to sales. Most sales across Europe went through small systems houses rather than computer shops.