Advanced Systems & Software was founded in 1991 by Wolf Dietrich and Gerald Carda as german distributor for products of Advanced Storage Solutions (USA) and SCSI peripherals.

One year later, a subsidiary company called Phase 5 was founded, which acted as hardware development company behind AS & S. After Phase 5 became more popular, AS & S was liquidated.

CardCo started as manufacturer and distributor of C64 and VIC20 peripherals; for the Amiga series, only aMEGA and a SCSI interface was produced.

The company went out of business in 1986, as the C64 market became less profitable and a reorganization was necessary to better serve the needs of the faster moving Amiga market - so Ed J. Lippert II took the two Amiga expansions (the expansions in development as well) and formed C-Ltd. Supra bought out the rights to manufacture the remaining CardCo C64 expansions.

C-Ltd was founded in 1986 by the owner of CardCo, Ed J. Lippert II.

Hardware and software development (e.g. SCSI expansions) was done by Creative Microsystems in the first time, that part was taken over by SoftCircuits; some expansions were devloped solely by C-Ltd, though.

In 1989, C-Ltd was liquidated due to insolvency. Microdyn was offering follow-up support for SCSI systems after C-Ltd went down.

The company started in 1986. Digital Creations wrote and marketed the applications software for all desktop video products of Progressive Image Technology. Beside that, they developed three video paint systems (Brilliance being amongst them) and wrote three games for Electronic Arts.

Through the years, the company marketed video hardware like the DCTV and genlocks under it's own name, and by 1992, they had 12 employees.

Mid of 1994, Digital Creations merged with Progressive Image Technology and a group of eight former senior staff members of NewTek, which left that company earlier in 1994. The new company was called Play Inc., and the business field moved towards the desktop video market for PC compatible computers.

GVP was founded in 1987 and dedicated to Amiga hardware production, so all hardware produced by GVP (mainly processor accelerators and HD controllers) was solely for Amiga computers.

GVP was always amongst the technology leaders and came up with unique products like the high-end graphics card EGS 110/24; they were also for example among the first to come up with a HD controller with autoboot capability.

Great Valley Products was basically doing only hardware design - the software development was mainly done by a small group of freelance programmers (e.g. Ralph Babel), and the manufacturing of the expansion cards was outsourced to 3rd party companies. The latter fact allowed GVP to participate from the most sophisticated production methods without having to upgrade an own production line. By 1990, GVP had 22 employees.

GVP announced in 1993 the Z-III SCSI controller A4098 to be the successor of the A4008, but that expansion never appeared, as in 1994, the company assets and product lines were auctioned off to Power Computing and M-Tec in a 50/50 split. The new company, which operated under the name GVP-M, was formed with a completely new staff, as the deal did not include the personnel of the old company. Production of some of the GVP products was restarted at this time, and those are still sold (no new expansions were developed, though).

Some staff members had already been involved in the development of Amiga hardware: The President of GVP, Gerard Bucas, was for four years Vice President in the technical division of Commodore. Jeff Boyer and Scott Hood were also formerly working for Commodore and in charge of the development of e.g. A2052, A2058, A2091 and A590 (Boyer) respective A2320, Amber Chip (Hood). Boyer changed to GVP in 1989, Hood was employed some years later in that company.

GVP-M is the successor company of Great Valley Products.

Founded as distributor for C-Ltd. products and other Amiga peripherals and software, the company started selling it's own developed memory expansions in 1989.

In the first time, Intelligent Memory has got one CEO, later there were two of them. Wolf Dietrich, known as CEO of Phase 5, worked for this company since 1989.

The business operations have been stopped 1991 and a successor company called Memphis was founded.

Memphis is the successor company of Intelligent Memory and was founded in 1991 by the former CEO of Intelligent Memory, Mr Uhlig. Main business segment was the distribution of IMtronics and CSA products, as well as other products like Imagine, FireCracker, Stormbringer, Adonis AmigaTalk & Adonis Arcnet.

Memphis produced and sold only one own expansion, the Next Generation / Kronos II.

After Memphis was liquidated, Amiga Oberland took over the support.

Phase 5 was 1992 founded as subsidiary company of AS&S by Wolf Dietrich and Gerald Carda, which were the owners of AS&S. Business segment was the development of general Amiga hardware, but mainly accelerator boards, graphics cards and SCSI controllers were brought out.

In 1996, the subsidiary company phase 5 Elektronikfertigungs GmbH was founded, which did the production of all the Phase 5 hardware expansions from that time on.

Phase 5 pressed ahead with new Amiga technology, so they were the first to come up with a

• DMA SCSI controller for the Zorro III bus (Fastlane Z3)
• 68060 accelerator card (Cyberstorm)
• 64 bit graphics card (Cybervision 64)
• PPC solution for A1200 and A4000 (Cyberstorm PPC)

The company filed for insolvency on 2000-02-09 and the liquidation of the company took place on 2000-04-27. DCE bought licenses before liquidation and produced later some of the Phase 5 hardware products under it's own name. The A/Box, a complete computer, was planned but never released.

Progressive Image Technology (PIT) was founded in 1978. In the first time the company developed hardware for personal computers. Since the early eighties, PIT worked in the field of computer video and engineered desktop video products for both IBM and Apple.

PIT is the manufacturer who developed and built most of Digital Creations' hardware (such as DCTV and their genlocks). Since that time, the company had designed many video peripherals including video effects hardware, overlay cards, genlocks, digitizers, and time base correctors.

In mid of 1994, Progressive Image Technology merged with Digital Creations and a group of eight former senior staff members of NewTek (they left that company earlier that year).

The company was founded in the early eighties as Progressive Peripherals & Software. In the first time, the company developed and published mainly C64 software like games or a database program (SuperBase). Later the company had also marketed and developed Amiga software, e.g. SuperBase, 3D Professional (developed by Cryogenic Software), Logistix, VZWrite or PIXmate.

Beginning in 1988, PP&S started producing Amiga hardware - primarily processor accelerators, RAM expansions and video hardware. PP&S had also marketed 3rd party hardware, like ASDG 8MI (sold as ProRAM 2000, a sticker covered the only 'old' name). By 1992, PP&S had 12 employees.

In 30.06.1992 a fire was burning all of their factory to ground. The company was immidiately rebuild as Progressive Peripherals Inc. at a different location, but the company did never recover from the fire as the insurance hadn't paid until 1.5 years later.

In 1993 the sales have dropped and 70% of their staff were layed off, and in the same year PPI went out of Amiga business and moved over (with a new name) to the PC market.

Some trivia about the staff:
The proprietor of PPI, Steve Spring, founded after the demise of PPI together with Sean Moore Aspen Systems, a maker of Alpha clones. Dan Browning became later president of the US devision of Precision Inc. (makers of SuperBase) in 1988. Brian Wagner, who developed for example 3D Professional v2.0, was also working for Cryogenic Software (Anim Workshop) - and Justin V. McCormick, who developed the Framegrabber software and PIXmate, became the coder of the game SimAnt.

Progressive Peripherals Inc. is the successor company of Progressive Peripherals & Software.

Tröps Computertechnik was founded by Ralf Tröps on 17.19.1986 as individual enterprise. The business objective was the development and distribution of expansions for Commodore computers.

The first expansion was the MTD-880, a floppy adapter. Other Amiga expansions like memory expansions, EPROM burners and a card for control and control of feedback followed.

Tröps Computertechnik changed in late 1988 to Tröps & Hierl Computertechnik - Mr Hierl was doing sales, marketing and finances and relieved Ralf Tröps from administrative work. Later, in Brühl (Germany) a shop was opened.

Keeping the size of the company in mind, a lot of development was done - planned was for example:

• a bridgeboard with Intel 80286 (never released due to problems with manufacturers of PC BIOS)
• various CPU expansions for A500 and A2000

The business object changed in the early 90's more and more towards the PC market. Around 1993, Ralf Tröps and Mr Hierl parted and the company merged one year later, in 1994, in a PC system vendor. That vendor was located in Cologne (Germany) and active in the field of personal computers and peripherals import (e.g. monitors from Taiwan).

Total sales figures of some Tröps expansions are:

• Eram: 2000×
• Multi I/O 200×
• Eram Mega: 1500×
• Mega module: 700-800×

Tröps & Hierl Computertechnik is the successor company of Tröps Computertechnik.