History of Gimix Inc.

GIMIX logo

(Make sure you click on the various links in this page, as they contain some fascinating information!)

Startup

Gimix Inc. was formed in late 1975 by Robert Phillips and Richard Don, to develop and sell home automation, remote control, and related products.

Robert (Bobby) Phillips was a life-long electronics enthusiast and high school dropout who took apart his first TV set at age 3. He provided the intellectual property and technical expertise for the new company, and became its president. A few years earlier he had totally automated his apartment using computerized relay circuits that he designed at age 25.

Richard & Arlene Don

Richard Don was a businessman who provided the capital, business expertise, and warehouse/office space (at 1337 West 37th Place, Chicago IL) for the new company. His official title was vice-president, but he served as the business manager and handled all the business details. His wife, Arlene, was also directly involved, serving as the bookkeeper/financial person, and assisting with marketing and sales.

In 1973 Richard Don had purchased a 1.83 acre lakefront property on Lake Michigan at 1 Glade Road, Glencoe IL. He wanted to build a very modern house on it, so hired famous Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman to design it. When Richard indicated his desire to have the house fully wired for automation and remote control, Tigerman introduced him to Robert Phillips, who then designed the circuits and wiring for Richard's new house. The house was completed in summer 1975.

Richard was so enthused about Robert's technological innovations in the house that he decided to go into business with him to market them. They named the new company Gimix, Inc. -- Richard came up with this name as a cute variant of "gimmicks". (The trademark registration filing indicated they first used the name "Gimix" in commerce on 1976-Jan-19.)

Initial Products

1976 and 1977 were primarily taken up with product development and testing, although there might have been some custom work and one-off product sales.

In 1978 the company introduced a trio of devices for telephones: the GIMIX Hold, which allowed a home receiver to put a caller on hold with a custom message, the GIMIX Gobbler, which allowed a home receiver to distinguish between multiple incoming calls, and the GIMIX Auto-Page, which linked a phone alarm or answering machine to a paging terminal.

SS-50 Bus

Gimix chassis

In 1979 the company introduced their first general-purpose microcomputer, the System 68, aka the GIMIX Ghost or the Mainframe or The Classy Chassis. It was similar to, and compatible with, the MP-68 computer from Southwest Technical Products Corp. (SwTPc), only much better.

The Gimix motherboard contained fifteen 50-pin slots instead of the SwTPc's seven. The connectors on the motherboard and on each board were gold-plated for reliability, instead of the SwTPc's tin-plated connectors that eventually caused many problems. Several DIP switches allowed the system to be compatible with software written for SwTPc and Midwest Scientific Instruments computers. The enclosure included a fan, and was large enough to also hold two full-height or four half-height 5.25" drives -- the SwTPc required a separate box for drives.

One of the biggest improvements, however, was in the power supply. The Gimix unit could supply 30 amps at +8V, 5 amps at +16V, and 5 amps at -16V, enough to power a fully loaded system, including two 5.25" drives. It used a ferro-resonant transformer and capacitor that provided stable output voltages over an AC input range of 90-140 volts at 60 Hz, and could even handle momentary loss of AC power without affecting the computer. (Export versions were available for other AC voltages and 50 Hz.)

The Gimix 6800 CPU Board featured a Motorola 6800 microprocessor, and sockets for four 2708 EPROMs. Various other boards were also developed, so that their ad in the October 1979 issue of '68' Micro Journal listed a 16KB static RAM board, 1-port and 4-port serial I/O boards, 2-port and 8-port parallel I/O boards, a 64 or 32 x 16 video board, an 80 x 24 video board with programmable character generator, an 8KB PROM board, as well as keypads with 16 or 35 buttons, 34-line opto-isolation boards, and relay driver boards.

Gimix advertised in many other magazines as well, such as BYTE, Kilobaud Microcomputing, Interface Age, Rainbow, Color Computer News, and MICRO (The 6502/6809 Journal). But the ads in '68' Micro Journal over the years provide a very good record of the products that Gimix offered. Michael Evenson has an extensive set of scanned issues from 1979 to 1990.

Gimix also exhibited at various trade shows and conferences such as the West Coast Computer Faire, Microware OS-9 Seminar, COMDEX, and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES, in Chicago and Las Vegas).

In 1980 Gimix introduced an 8-port serial I/O card, a 512x512 bit map graphics board, and a 32KB static RAM board. Two floppy disk controller boards (single-density and double-density) were developed for the 30-pin I/O bus.

As a side note, the reliability of the Gimix system made it useful in industrial control applications. However, the SS-50 and SS-30 buses had a major deficiency -- they did not provide card edge guides (a card cage) to firmly hold the boards in place. When an SS-50/SS-30 bus system experienced significant vibration, it could eventually develop intermittent failures, or even fail to boot and run. Similarily, if a fully assembled system was shipped with boards plugged into the motherboard, the jolting and jostling in transit could damage the system. But since boards from the various manufacturers didn't all have exactly the same dimensions, a card cage could not easily be retro-fitted, and I don't know of any that were. Many other buses such as S-100, Multibus, STD, ExorBus, G-64, and VME, were designed to use card cages.

6809

Gimix 6809 Plus

Also introduced in 1980 was a new 6809 CPU card called the GIMIX 6809 PLUS CPU. It featured four 24-pin sockets that could be used for ROM, EPROM, or RAM chips, two 18-pin sockets for 1KB of scratchpad RAM, a 6840 programmable timer, a time-of-day clock with battery backup, an optional 9511A or 9512 Arithmetic Processor chip, and a choice of 3 memory management techniques: straight bank select, SwTPc compatible DAT (1 task map), or GIMIX Enhanced DAT (16 task maps). It eventually supported several operating systems: TSC 6809 FLEX, Microware OS-9/6809 Level I and Level II, and TSC 6809 UniFLEX.

In 1981 Gimix added a DMA floppy disk controller for 5.25" and 8" drives. By 1982 they were also offering 19MB hard disk drives (then called Winchesters).

The June 1982 catalog from Gimix showed how extensive their product lineup had become. It mentions some of their many customers, although there were also others such as CERN, Cirque du Soleil, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, DuPont, and the Atomic Energy Commission. Custom variants of products were also developed for some high-level customers.

As the products from Gimix became more sophisticated and less "gimmicky", Richard and Robert eventually decided that GIMIX wasn't the right name, so started using the name GMX instead.

CPU III

In 1983 Gimix introduced their high-performance GMX 6809 CPU III board,
designed specifically to run Microware's OS-9/6809 Level II operating system, or
Gimix 6809 CPU III the TSC 6809 UniFLEX operating system, with minimal overhead. Intelligent serial and parallel I/O boards off-loaded some of the work from the main 6809 processor, to maximize performance when many users were simultaneously connected. This was probably the "ultimate" 6809 CPU board ever offered (matched only by the 9639 Memory Management Processor from Creative Micro Systems). But a fully loaded system could cost over $10,000!

An updated list of available products now required a full page of very small type.

Gimix was awarded the prestigious President's "E" Certificate for Exports in 1984.

68020

1985 saw the introduction of their SS-50 bus GMX-020 CPU board with a Motorola MC68020 32-bit processor, high-speed MMU, up to 128KB EPROM, and a 4KB no-wait-state instruction cache. Its I/O bus timing was different from the 6800 and 6809 CPU boards, so could not use I/O boards using chips such as the 6850 or 6821. Also, its use of the SS-50 bus meant that it was limited to 1 Megabyte of RAM, and accessed memory boards only 8 bits at a time, although the cache helped minimize the effects of this bottleneck. It was supplied with TSC UniFLEX VM, a demand-paged virtual memory operating system. But I don't remember ever seeing a picture of this CPU board.

GMX

Their amazing GMX Micro-20 single-board computer (SBC) came out in late 1985 or early 1986. It was small enough (5.75" x 8.8") to mount directly on a 5.25" drive, yet contained a 32-bit MC68020 processor (12.5 or 16.67 or 20 MHz), an optional MC68881 floating-point co-processor, 2MB 32-bit wide dynamic RAM, up to 256KB of 32-bit wide EPROM, 4 serial I/O ports (RS-232 transceivers were on a separate board), an 8-bit parallel I/O port, time-of-day clock with battery backup, floppy disk controller, SASI hard drive interface, and a 16-bit I/O expansion bus. The lowest cost option was $2565 with a 12.5 MHz processor, but no floating point chip.

The Mustang-020 system from Data-Comp (a division of Computer Publishing Inc., the publishers of '68' Micro Journal) used the GMX Micro-20. It was available in several configurations, but with a cabinet, power supply, 5.25" 80-track floppy disk drive, 10 Megabyte hard drive, hard drive controller board, and OS-9/68K, cost $4569. Did Gimix themselves ever sell complete systems using this board? I don't know.

Memories

In October 2025 I was contacted by a former Gimix employee who had worked there in the early 1980s. This section contains some of his memories:

Bobby (Robert Phillips) was a brilliant engineer, and especially a wiz with programmable logic (used in many Gimix boards). He was receptive to new and innovative hardware and software ideas.

Both Richard Don and Bobby were adamant that Gimix produce the best, featureful, and most reliable products possible. This included both hardware and software. If a competitor had a feature, Gimix had to do it better and faster and more reliably. Their passion and attention to detail were what made their products far and away the best anywhere. This included details such as optimizing the floppy disk format to ensure the fastest possible reading speed, or adding features to their version of FLEX to differentiate it and make it better than the TSC or SwTPc versions.

Every system that Gimix made was thoroughly tested and burned in for a week or more before being shipped to the customer. A motor/generator set provided 220VAC @ 50 Hz power to systems configured for export.

Although Gimix hardware was expensive compared to their competitors, customers knew that when they bought Gimix products they were getting the best that money could buy.

Some of the features that Gimix pioneered in the SS-50 world were:

The "Ghost" name came from a feature on their 16KB static RAM board, where each 4KB block of memory could be turned on or off (ghosted) in software. This allowed a system to have more than 32KB RAM installed (which was required by the Gimix Home Control System). The original SS-50 bus 6800 system from SwTPc was designed to have RAM boards only in the $0000-$7FFF (32KB) address space.

The Gimix facility was located in an industrial area at the corner of W 37th Place and S Iron St. If you had to take the bus to work, it would drop you off at the corner of 35th and Iron, and you would have to walk four blocks from there to get to the office. Unfortunately, about half way down Iron St. was a tannery, and the smell from it could be overwhelming, especially during the summer. You learned to not eat breakfast before going to work.

Richard "pioneered" the idea that the price should be the part number, so every product they sold was priced with a different number for the cents, with the cents portion being the part number. For example, the GIMIX 6809 PLUS CPU board was part #05, so its price was $578.05.

Looking Back

Gimix had decided to focus on higher-end customers that appreciated and needed top-quality systems. But this resulted in products that had high prices compared to the competition, which limited their market. Despite this, by 1981 the company had grown to approximately 20 employees, and probably had even more at its peak, which in my opinion is quite respectable!

Five pictures of the Gimix factory, probably taken in early 1982, can be seen in the December 1982 issue of Color Computer News. I believe the large machine visible in two pictures is a wave-soldering machine. But at least as of 1981 they did not have an automatic through-hole component insertion machine, so all resistors, capacitors, chips, sockets, etc. were manually inserted into the bare boards before soldering.

Winding Down

By the late 1980s, the rise of lower cost IBM PC-AT compatible computers with MS-DOS (and later, Windows), eroded the sales of many of the early microcomputer companies, including Gimix.

Around 1990 Richard Don decided to retire from all his businesses, including the warehouse and Gimix, and sold his share to Robert. A short while later Robert moved Gimix to Northbrook IL. But within a few years he shut the business down, as Gimix could no longer compete successfully in the rapidly changing marketplace.

Don Family

Richard and Arlene Don had three children: Arthur, Edward, and Steven.

Richard passed away in 2005 at age 76. Arlene stayed living in the house until summer 2024 when she moved to assisted living. She passed away on 2025-Mar-18 at age 94. The house was sold in August 2025 -- the property had been owned by the family for 52 years.

Their son Arthur was an attorney for Gimix for much of its existence. For many years he was also the primary attorney and a corporate director of Microware Systems Corp. (Des Moines, Iowa), the developers of the OS-9 operating system and related software.

Other Resources

* Scans of manuals, images of floppy disks, image of ROM, on the Søren Roug web site.
* Documentation on the bitsavers.org web site.
* (does anyone know of other resources I should add to this list?)

Notes

Some of the information on this page was obtained from the Wikipedia article on Gimix Inc. Other information was provided by members of the Don family, from former employees, or came from various other sources, many of which are linked to above. (Make sure you click on those links.) Of course, after all these years memories can become hazy, and people sometimes remember things differently than someone else. But if you believe there are any errors on this page, or if you have additional information that would be relevant, including any photos, please let me know.

While most of us now refer to the SS-50 and SS-30 buses, Gimix and others sometimes just called it the S-50 bus. SwTPc hadn't given the buses any real name, so a few years later their competitor Smoke Signal Broadcasting started calling it "SS-50" (SS = Smoke Signal), and this name eventually became commonly used.


"GIMIX" and "GHOST" were registered trademarks of Gimix Inc.
"FLEX" and "UniFLEX" were trademarks of Technical System Consultants (TSC).
"OS-9" is a registered trademark of Microware LP.

Last revised 2025-Oct-26 16:48 PDT.
Copyright 2025- David C. Wiens.

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