---
title: AM International Jacquard Systems J100 - J500
categories:
- Computers
types:
- Professional Computer
origins:
- U.S.A.
years:
- '1980'
cpus:
- Four AMD 2900 bit slice ALUs
params:
  name: J100 - J500
  image: /media/museum/photos/jacquard_j500_system_1.jpg
  company: /companies/am-international-jacquard-systems
  company_name: AM International Jacquard Systems
  specs:
  - label: NAME
    value: J100 - J500
  - label: MANUFACTURER
    value: AM International Jacquard Systems
  - label: TYPE
    value: Professional Computer
  - label: ORIGIN
    value: U.S.A.
  - label: YEAR
    value: '1980'
  - label: KEYBOARD
    value: Full-stroke keyboard
  - label: CPU
    value: |-
      Four AMD 2900 bit slice ALUs (16-bit)\
      The Jacquard engineers wrote the microcode on the proms that provided the higher level instructions.
  - label: RAM
    value: 128 KB
  - label: ROM
    value: Unknown
  - label: TEXT MODES
    value: 80 chars. x 24 lines
  - label: GRAPHIC MODES
    value: None
  - label: COLORS
    value: Monochrome
  - label: SOUND
    value: No sound
  - label: SIZE / WEIGHT
    value: Unknown
  - label: I/O PORTS
    value: |-
      1 x Parallel printer 12-bit port (maybe 2), 2 x RS232\
      2 x external disk interfaces normally used with Pertec 14
  - label: BUILT IN MEDIA
    value: 2 x 8
  - label: OS
    value: proprietary DOS
  - label: POWER SUPPLY
    value: PSU built-in
  - label: PERIPHERALS
    value: Hard-disks, printers
  - label: PRICE
    value: Unknown
  tabs:
  - photos
  - adverts
  photos:
  - title: 'J-100 WORKSTATION #1'
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/photos/jacquard_j100_terminal_1.jpg
  - title: 'J-100 WORKSTATION #2'
    subtitle: ''
    text: From a Jacquard brochure
    image: /media/museum/photos/jacquard_j500_terminal_2.jpg
  - title: J-500 SYSTEM
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/photos/jacquard_j500_system_2.jpg
  - title: J-500 WORKSTATION
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/photos/jacquard_j500_terminal_1.jpg
  - title: PERTEC H.D.D.
    subtitle: ''
    text: 14", 20 MB hard disk unit
    image: /media/museum/photos/jacquard_pertecfdd_1.jpg
  adverts:
  - title: JACQUARD SYSTEMS
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/pubs/jacquard_j500_brochure_6.jpg
  - title: 'ADVERT #1'
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/pubs/jacquard_j500_pub_1.jpg
  - title: 'JACQUARD BROCHURE #1'
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/pubs/jacquard_j500_pub_2.jpg
  - title: 'JACQUARD BROCHURE #2'
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/pubs/jacquard_j500_pub_3.jpg
  - title: 'JACQUARD BROCHURE #3'
    subtitle: ''
    text: Strange logo isn't it?
    image: /media/museum/pubs/jacquard_j500_brochure_3.jpg
  - title: 'JACQUARD BROCHURE #4'
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/pubs/jacquard_j500_brochure_4.jpg
  - title: 'JACQUARD BROCHURE #5'
    subtitle: ''
    text: |-
      The brochure says:\
      During Jacquard's early years, as a "system house", the company developed communications and peripheral devices that were not available from any other sources. Some of these are still available only from Jacquard.

      Through these devices, Jacquard acquired hardware design and production skills, thus becoming experienced in integrating 'pieces' into systems that worked, and worked well.

      These years of experience enabled Jacquard to design the first truly affordable and multi-functional small business system - the Jacquard Videocomputer...
    image: /media/museum/pubs/jacquard_j500_brochure_5.jpg
  - title: 'AMTEXT BROCHURE #1'
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/pubs/jacquard_j100_amtext_1.jpg
  - title: 'AMTEXT BROCHURE #2'
    subtitle: ''
    text: |-
      The brochure says:\
      When you buy, lease or rent word processing equipment from AM Jacquard Systems, you get our total commitment, now and in the future, that assures the successful installation and operation of your AMtext word processing system.

      To support that commitment, we have offices in over 100 cities throughout North America staffed with skilled professionals ready to meet your neads with planning, training. supplies, and service...

      ...The AMtext 100 is a true shared resource, multifunction information system capable of supporting multiple work stations and peripherals simultaneously.

      The Amtext 425 and 425A are powerful stand-alone work stations with a full-page video display

      The AMtext 225 is a low-cost system that turns electric typewriters into flexible text editors.

      The AMtext product line includes a complete selection of peripheral devices, including telecommunications, an optical character reader. magnetic card reader, phototypesetters, daisy wheel printers. high-speed line and matrix printers, as well as mass storage on floppy and hard disk drive units.
    image: /media/museum/pubs/jacquard_j100_amtext_2.jpg
  comments:
  - author: Jenny Robinson (UK)
    date: Thursday 28th April 2011
    text: I worked for Jacquard before it became AM Jacquard and also for a couple of Jacquard distributors. When Type-Rite came out I became the word processing queen and travelled all over Europe training Jacquard distributors. I guess it was late seventies and into the eighties. Those were amazingly happy days which I remember with great fondness. I worked with Norman Tinklin, Robin Bews, Barry Lawrence and Terry Hart. We had some wild times
  - author: Carol Wollard (USA)
    date: Wednesday 9th March 2011
    text: I worked for ATV on Daimler Street in Santa Ana - those were crazy times. No doubt, Typerite was the best word processing software I have ever used - I loved Jacquard computers - too bad they went by the wayside.
  - author: Robert R. Heinz
    date: Tuesday 4th January 2011
    text: |-
      I worked in Technical Support in the Santa Monica office in 1977 with Lynn Shelly and another gentleman I forget. I was responsible for supporting the Family Feud show at ABC Studios for 2 seasons. I got to sit backstage with Richard Dawson and Gene Woods during every taping and will never forget the fun

      Thamkls!!
  - author: Tom Mallen (Los Angeles, CA USA)
    date: Friday 4th June 2010
    text: Just visited this site to see what might be available about Jacquard Systems. I was Director of Finance from May 1977 through the acquisition by AM International (formerly Addressograph, Multigraphics etc.) until the west coast office was relocated to New Jersey at the end of 1980. Remember Ken Rubin, Edgar Bolton, the investment group of celebrities that funded the startup company Magnatronics and the growth of this phenominally talented group. A true leader in the infant Wordprocessing arena. The AM acquisition helped the growth but AM''s problems denied an opportunity to become the premier product. Wordperfect and Word were far behind Jacquard''s capabilities in 1979.
  - author: Art Cline (Dallas, TX)
    date: Friday 11th July 2008
    text: |-
      Wow what memories!

      Fred, I was one of the four National Technical Support personnel that you mentioned.
  - author: John Lerno (Westminster/Ca)
    date: Monday 7th July 2008
    text: Hello Fred Rodney I used to work at ATV in the middle to late 80s on the Jacquard systems. Wow it is a small world seeing you here
  - author: Pat McAuley (Dublin, Ireland)
    date: Thursday 20th March 2008
    text: Hey Mike Hopkins, fancy you popping up on an Old Computer message board. Memory Ireland, memories flooding back of Ballsbridge and the Irish Sweeps Stake!!! Keep up the good work!!!!
  - author: Fred Roney (Schaumburg, IL)
    date: Friday 30th November 2007
    text: |-
      Updated email address. Motorola bought Symbol Technologies effective Jan,4 2007

      FAME member. Former AM employee.
  - author: Mike Hopkins (Adelaide Australia)
    date: Friday 14th July 2006
    text: |-
      Nice to see follow ups to my post of nearly 4 years ago. I used to program in Super Basic on the J100. I still get some of those error codes coming into mind e.g. Error 48 - disk full and I think 36 was file not found.

      Worked with John McGrann and Michael Harvey, other posters to this page, and Terry Fossey, mentioned at Memory Ireland.

      Memory had a 'brave' project to develop an accounting system called MAX for the J100/500, using programmers in Zimbabwe. The project became known as MAD MAX.
  - author: Fred Roney (Chicgao, IL USA)
    date: Friday 30th September 2005
    text: |-
      I'm astonished that people still talk about or use these systems still. It definitely brought a smile to my face. I was employed by AM in 80-82, transferred from Varityper to Jacquard in 81, ended up with ATV Systems and FDR Field Service through the sale of the division. I was 1 of 4 National Technical Support personnel kept on to provide support for the Jacquard J100, J300, J500 series up until about 1989 with the sale to Decision Data, now Decision One.\
      If I remember right the J500's CPU was made up of 4 ALU's, the microcode was burned to PROMS and the max mem. was either 256k or 512k. And yes TypeRite was definitely ahead of it's time.\
      I wish you all well. It's nice to know some people on the planet still remember. I don't bother mentioning AM Jacquard much these days. Most people say AM who and what’s a Jacquard, isn't that some kind of loom?
  - author: Anthony Dodd (United Kingdom)
    date: Sunday 16th January 2005
    text: It was interesting to stumble across this site. I first started work as a programmer working for Memory Computers, Dublin (1985-87). I had great pleasure in working on the J100 & J500 (later). It had a very simple and intuitive basic language support, the operating system was simple to use. Commands such as sprcat (super cat), still stick in my mind to this day. I agree with all the comments that the word processor on the jacquards was way ahead of it's time. While at memory I started working on a new breed of Motorola machines, running Unix V, and I remember distinctly thinking how cumbersome vi was in comparison, the nearest thing I came to type-rite was word perfect a few years later. I was involved in developing systems and supporting systems for a great number of installations throughout the city. I remember my last involvement with the J500s was with respect to installing the new breed of laser printers arriving on the market. There we're problems with the J500s inability
      to support the XON/XOFF protocol used by these printers.
  - author: Tim Trent (UK)
    date: Monday 10th January 2005
    text: |-
      Back in 1979 I joined the UK company as a baby salesman. Damn these machines were good. For me they set the WP standard. They beat Wang hollow.

      I loved the cut and paste and copy and paste rulers. Thsi was pretty much the forrunner of "highlight and select" really.

      At a trade show we were next to a shredder manaufacturer. He knew as little about coimputers as we did. but I did manage to get him to find out of he offered an optional RS232C connection to his shredders!
  - author: Tom Morgan (Sacramento CA)
    date: Friday 18th July 2003
    text: It's very interesting to see these other postings regarding the J100 and J500 because I worked for Jacquard in Santa Monica on both of these systems. They were pretty revolutionary for their time, especially the J500 and you guys got to see some of the follow-on products after I left the company in 1979. I actually worked for them during 2 time periods and was a test technician on the J500 in 1979.
  - author: Ruth Cust (Sydney, Australia)
    date: Tuesday 22nd April 2003
    text: |-
      My first 'real' job was as a technician (they called us 'engineers') on Jacquards and AMTexts for the Australian distributors - Computer Resources, later AM Jacquard, then Datronics, in the late '70s early '80s. I remember the Irish J505 - we sold them here.

      For a while they were great business - TypeRite, accounting programs, inventory control. It absolutely boomed.

      We installed J100s with 14 or 16 J105s in TAFE Colleges around Sydney. I now teach in one of the Colleges, and the Jacquard sign is still above the door to the old Jacquard room in the basement of my building 20 years later. It has PCs in it now. Sigh.
  - author: Mike Hopkins (Australia)
    date: Monday 28th October 2002
    text: |-
      I used to work for the Irish distributor of Jacquard, a company called Memory Computer, based in Dublin. Memory's engineers actually developed the modifications to the J500 which turned it from a single user into a multi-user (up to 3 concurrent users) machine. From my recollection it had a maximum memory of 128kb (yes kb not MB). I believe they may have sold the design back to Jacquard, or AM-Jacquard as they became. Memory went on to manufacture its own PC like machine which was compatible with the Jacquard line, but not with the IBM PC. It included a cassette tape drive controllable from the keyboard, which was aimed at the dictation / word processing market. The Jacquard line had, what was at the time, a very good word processing application called Type-Rite. Memory Computer listed on the London Stock Exchange in the early 80's but went bust a few years later.

      Mike Hopkins
  - author: Fred Roney (Chicago, IL USA)
    date: Friday 30th September 2005
    text: |-
      I had a few more memories come back.\
      The last Pertec drive used was a 24BM Drive. 3 fixed internal platters and 1 removable. Each platter was 6MB. It used a linear motor (Voice Coil), a grate and gratitude systems for positioning the heads. Quite a challenge to align.\
      Also used was the Control Data Corp CDC9762 80MB drive, interfaced through a Systems Industries Controller or Formatter.\
      Some systems had a Pertec Reel-Reel Tape drive with compliance arms, no vacuum column. Use of this device also required the use of a Pertec controller or formatter. NRZI and PE formats.

      Can you believe this, one of the last support calls I did (around 1988) was at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Boeing had a J300 system installed with 2 CDC9762 drives. Among other things, they used it to communicate over the internet to other contractors and University research centers.
  - author: Robert Harvey (London, United Kingdom)
    date: Monday 20th June 2005
    text: |-
      I got a J500 up and running in the Bank of Credit and Commerce to word process the annual accounts while our computer division were still struggling to use other systems. We brought a second J500 in later and then upgraded one to a three screen J505 with a 5Mbyte fixed and 5Mbyte removable hard disc system. We continued to use this sytem until the the late 80s when PCs took over. TypeRite was well ahead of its time and in my opinion was not equalled until WordPerfect 5.1 hit the market.

      I also used the DataRite product on it. This used a COBOL like language with a form system that automatically generated the enviroment section of the source code. Of course you had the luxury of using TypeRite to edit the DataRite source files. The 16 bit error codes from the J500/505 werevery detailed and particularly useful when debugging applications. They were logically structured so the high bits told the programmer which subsystem had generated the error which was often enough to establish the error in my code.

      There was also a spelling checker called SpellRite. We experimented with this but made little practical use of it because it was very slow. You ran SpellRite as a batch program which generated exception files. These files were then manually checked and used to update the dictionary and to correct spellings if I recall correctly.

      One of my more interesting experiments was to demonstrate that AM could typeset documents directly from a J500 disc because they used a Jacquard computer in their phototypestting system. All that the technician operating the phototypesetter had to do was set up some macro to translate key control sequences into the equivalents of styles. (I believe that we could also have sent our documents for typesetting over a phone line if we had wanted to). My boss did not approve of this experiment and it came to nothing in the end.

      There is some doubt on this site as to the amount of ROM containing the Jacquard's microcode. From memory I think that it was 128Kbytes because I am sure that the system's total addressable memory space was 256Kbytes. But I could be wrong. I do recall that the J505 upgrade involved replacing a lot of dil packaged ROM chips.
  - author: Cy foughty (Portland, OR)
    date: Thursday 11th September 2003
    text: |-
      I can't believe I stumbled across this site! This is great. I worked for ETV computer systems in Amarillo, Texas USA and later we moved to Dallas. We built a "modern" ( at the time) hard disk and tape backup subsystem for the J100 and J500. We also had a cpu upgrade board. I beleive we called it the J300. That was a long time ago. Actually Skip and Steve Butterfield designed and built the first ones. Later I moved the manufacturing to Dallas.

      The products breathed new life into the old systems. This was from 1983 to 1987. We sold the storage subsystems to Memory Ireland, Jacquard France, and othjers. I can't remember the distributor in Australia.

      We sold a lot of systems directly. I personally installed storage systems in NASA, the 103rd floor of the World Trade Center in New York city for Amercian Express, Texas Supreme Court and Appeals courts, and many others.

      This does bring back old memories. Really good ones. To this day, I still think that Type-Rite has word processing features that still aren't in Word or any other place. Really good features like the math filter bar to work on columns. If you think about it, it was the first spreadsheet and it was integrated into the word processor. These were great systems.

      So to be so windy but it was a good time for me.
  - author: Skip Shaw (USA)
    date: Friday 29th July 2022
    text: I’m Skip Shaw, a founding member of Jacquard Systems. Originally, I was in charge of hiring and managing all of the software engineers at Jacquard, later also acquiring responsibility for the hardware engineering (with leader/J500 inventor, Steve Butterfield) and then later taking over Marketing after Addressograph Multigraph (later AM International) acquired what became the AM Jacquard division. Out of college, I originally worked at TRW in Redondo Beach and as a result much of the “founding� software crew were TRW legacies…my then best friend, John McCulley (TypeRite) (John has passed away), Barbara Renshaw (later my wife) AND Jim Cook (both brilliant Operating System Software Engineers), Steve Nelson (my first office mate at TRW) (known primarily for the SORT Software that blew away the IBM OS 360 sort), and several others not mentioned (as of yet) on this site PLUS numerous “top notch� software engineers, hardware engineers $ technicians (Ken Rubin and many others)
      were gathered to create what continues to be recognized as one of the most innovative, farsighted software and computer systems vendors of its era. After the ATV acquisition of AM Jacquard occurred (due to the imminent bankruptcy of AM International), Steve Butterfield, Steve Nelson, (the 3 of us just happened to all be career Air Force Officers'' sons), Barb Renshaw, Bill Bailey (the Utilities Guru), Bob Hossely (the 3rd System II guru) and I (as CEO) formed The Peerless Group (later Peerless Systems) and took that company public on the NASDAQ. At Jacquard, we accomplished a lot of very unusual and forward looking products, perhaps the most publicly notable being John McCully’s “TypeRite� that was literally many years ahead of the competition. TypeRite achieved its stellar reputation because of John’s unusual creative thinking combined with the very farsighted design and implementation of the Jacquard Operating System (System II) and its attendant compilers. (TypeRrite was
      partially written in assembly language, coupled with the Super Basic Compiler (implemented by Doug Ahl) and a very large portion of TypeRite’s capabilities and flexibilities were provided by the very “transparent� and superbly integrated System II and Super Basic. And let''s don’t forget Diana Gaskell’s truly innovative "math library� which itself "speed obliterated" the OS 360 speeds (just as the SORT had) in the many benchmarks that our customers generated. So, the Jacquard Technical Group was a family of innovators and doers that initially came as the very best in their respective fields (and thought they knew everything, and that their thoughts alone were the very best). What happened at Jacquard was that these “Super Engineers� learned that they had brilliant peers, began to respect others’ ideas and integrate and meld these truly innovative ideas into a “fantastically integrated� and forward-looking body of technologies… i.e., “an integrated whole.�
      In the process of that respect and teamwork, Jacquard became a family that is still together in friendship today… and from time to time gathers electronically and physically to celebrate those enduring friendships. I’m proud and grateful to have had that opportunity and experience with “our� family. And we all appreciate the recognition that we continue to receive.
  - author: Skip Shaw (USA)
    date: Friday 29th July 2022
    text: I’m Skip Shaw, a founding member of Jacquard Systems. Originally, I was in charge of hiring and managing all of the software engineers at Jacquard, later also acquiring responsibility for the hardware engineering (with leader/J500 inventor, Steve Butterfield) and then later taking over Marketing after Addressograph Multigraph (later AM International) acquired what became the AM Jacquard division. Out of college, I originally worked at TRW in Redondo Beach and as a result much of the “founding� software crew were TRW legacies…my then best friend, John McCulley (TypeRite) (John has passed away), Barbara Renshaw (later my wife) AND Jim Cook (both brilliant Operating System Software Engineers), Steve Nelson (my first office mate at TRW) (known primarily for the SORT Software that blew away the IBM OS 360 sort), and several others not mentioned (as of yet) on this site PLUS numerous “top notch� software engineers, hardware engineers $ technicians (Ken Rubin and many others)
      were gathered to create what continues to be recognized as one of the most innovative, farsighted software and computer systems vendors of its era. After the ATV acquisition of AM Jacquard occurred (due to the imminent bankruptcy of AM International), Steve Butterfield, Steve Nelson, (the 3 of us just happened to all be career Air Force Officers'' sons), Barb Renshaw, Bill Bailey (the Utilities Guru), Bob Hossely (the 3rd System II guru) and I (as CEO) formed The Peerless Group (later Peerless Systems) and took that company public on the NASDAQ. At Jacquard, we accomplished a lot of very unusual and forward looking products, perhaps the most publicly notable being John McCully’s “TypeRite� that was literally many years ahead of the competition. TypeRite achieved its stellar reputation because of John’s unusual creative thinking combined with the very farsighted design and implementation of the Jacquard Operating System (System II) and its attendant compilers. (TypeRrite was
      partially written in assembly language, coupled with the Super Basic Compiler (implemented by Doug Ahl) and a very large portion of TypeRite’s capabilities and flexibilities were provided by the very “transparent� and superbly integrated System II and Super Basic. And let''s don’t forget Diana Gaskell’s truly innovative "math library� which itself "speed obliterated" the OS 360 speeds (just as the SORT had) in the many benchmarks that our customers generated. So, the Jacquard Technical Group was a family of innovators and doers that initially came as the very best in their respective fields (and thought they knew everything, and that their thoughts alone were the very best). What happened at Jacquard was that these “Super Engineers� learned that they had brilliant peers, began to respect others’ ideas and integrate and meld these truly innovative ideas into a “fantastically integrated� and forward-looking body of technologies… i.e., “an integrated whole.�
      In the process of that respect and teamwork, Jacquard became a family that is still together in friendship today… and from time to time gathers electronically and physically to celebrate those enduring friendships. I’m proud and grateful to have had that opportunity and experience with “our� family. And we all appreciate the recognition that we continue to receive.
  - author: Steve Jones (United States)
    date: Thursday 24th February 2022
    text: 'I have been doing more searching since finding this website earlier today.. I wanted to provide this resource for other Jacquard fans! Here''''s a magazine from 1983 that shows the system I was involved in: https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Broadcast-Engineering/BE/80s/BE-1983-05.pdf The cover picture is showing a television show being captioned by a J-100 and the software my stepfather''''s company wrote.. My personal involvement was just porting the software to the PC platform later in the 80s but now I''''m interested more in the history of the old J-100..'
  - author: Steve Jones (US)
    date: Wednesday 23rd February 2022
    text: I''m trying to remember/research the old Jacquard systems.. My stepfather owned a company called Translation Systems, INC which wrote some court reporting software, and then television captioning software using the same translation routines.. I first became aware in the mid-80s when I was hired to migrate the captioning side of the software over to the IBM PC. I never really did much with the Jacquard except for to review source code and run their software for purposes of comparing functionality to what I was writing on the PC, but I''m trying to find any information on the old systems.. Anyone else on this board ever deal with TSI or any of the translation software that was pretty common in the US courts and the Marine Corps in the late 70s and early 80s? Maybe someone who supported the captioning on Jacquard at NCI in Washington or CCDA in Toronto? The first live TV captioning was done on this system. It was the Superbowl in 1985! We eventually replaced the Jacquard with our
      PC version, and then ultimately got replaced by systems by larger companies with bigger pockets!
  - author: Barry Lawrence (UK) (United Kingdom)
    date: Monday 7th September 2020
    text: I was involved with the launch of the J100 into the UK. Just rummaged through these names, many bringing back happy memories, especially Jenny, Lorna, Norman, Robin and Terry.
  - author: Steve Klekas (San Diego, United States)
    date: Wednesday 2nd September 2020
    text: My dad Nick got me a job as a J500 operator in Newbury Park. It was my first computer job. Not counting selling Ti calculators at the mall. I ended up being a technician. The j500 was a great computer to learn on being a bit slice architecture where all the instructions were on display as it were, coming out of the ROM and moving bits around in and out of RAM and the ALU. Didn''t know a bit from the bite when I started there but pretty much was able to learn all the basics, thanks to many hours at the machines , my dad, Mark Fletcher, and Mark(?) Hayes, the first two wizards I knew. Steve Butterfield was The Wizard in La who designed the J500 I was told. Met him years later at Teradata when it was still little. About 40 years ago.
  - author: Lynn Shelley (Newbury Park, CA, USA)
    date: Tuesday 28th April 2020
    text: Dick Cavanaugh hired me from CMC/Pertec in 1976 for tech support, had some good times at Jacquard. even got to spend 3 weeks in Bangkok, Thailand assisting Anunt Jethanamest''s sales office. I talked Bob Heinz into coming aboard in tech support, then left shortly afterwards for another job. I went to work for myself between ''81 and ''91, hardware support of about 70 Jacquard systems in the SoCal area. Jacquard computers didn''t start to disappear until the 486-based PCs came along, which spoke a lot for Jacquard''s hardware and software. I remember Ken Rubin, Steve Butterfield, Dick Cohen, Tom Mallen, Walter Rey, Edgar Bolton, Dick Cavanaugh obviously, Mark Crawford, Phil Wall, ''Dallas'' Alice, Kathy Doucette, Skip Shaw and Barb Renshaw, Jim Tury, Gladys Goodman, lots and lots of good people and good times.
  - author: Keith Whitehead (New Zealand)
    date: Wednesday 12th June 2019
    text: I have 4 Jacquards at home along with a shared hard drive . Never powered them up. The external hard drive, is HEAVY, 2 of us can only just do it.
  - author: Francis Remkiewicz (California/USA)
    date: Tuesday 30th April 2019
    text: |-
      In 1979 I worked for the IRS in Washington, DC. I convinced the IRS to sole source an AM Jacquard J500 for creating a time and attendance automated system for Headquarters, IRS. I worked with the AMfolks for over 18 months until completion. I was the first to transmit our DC data to the Data Center in Detroit over a 300 baud acoustic coupler.\
      That application, restructured many times is still in use by the IRS.\
      By the way, my 3 year old daughter learned to spell on Type-rite. Many a Saturday and Sunday she would accompany her dad to the office. Does anyone remember the heat issues with the J500? The heat in DC regardless of the A/C was a constant problem. I am glad to have been a tiny part of your history.
  - author: John Koneyak (Baltimore )
    date: Wednesday 13rd June 2018
    text: Man does this bring back memories. I worked for AM International, then ATV, then FDR as a Customer Engineer on Amtext 425, J100, J300, and the J500. I worked out of the Baltimore office with a great guy and good friend named Jim McElvaney. Man was he sharp! They would send us for training in Schaumburg. Wow what memories!
  - author: David Geddes (Silicon Valley)
    date: Monday 24th October 2016
    text: |-
      I was rummaging through a box of old photos and ran across a picture I took of the factory where J100s were being built, somewhere around 1976. I was a bench technician at the time, and later worked on the E100 Embossers. I would be happy to share the photo, but can''t find a way to upload it. dgeddes@fastmail.fm\
      By the way, does anyone know what became of Jeff Chapin?
  - author: John Lerno
    date: Wednesday 21st September 2016
    text: Hello Carrol. I worked with you at ATV on Daimler :)
  - author: Liza Loop (USA)
    date: Friday 16th September 2016
    text: |-
      If you want to see the brochure introducing the Jacquard 100 Videocomputer and its pricelist, go to: http://www.loopcntr.net/repository/2828.pdf

      Enjoy! Liza Loop
  - author: Richard Smith (UK)
    date: Friday 3rd June 2016
    text: I worked on J100 and J500 in the mid 80s while working for MBS Engineering in the Midlands with Gordon Whitehouse and Barry Brind ex Jaquard engineers. A lot of our systems had Pertec drives. Remember celaning heads and platters on PM visits.
  - author: Noel Griffin (Ireland)
    date: Monday 23rd November 2015
    text: I developed My-Plan the 3D spreadsheet that ran on J100 and J500. Ah System II - happy memories, but not fond of DD01 error 8''s :) TypeRite was superb
  - author: Robin Bews (Reading, England)
    date: Wednesday 23rd September 2015
    text: I worked for Jacquard Systems in the UK as an engineer. I worked with Jenny Robinson, Norman Tinklin, Terry Hart and Barry Lawrence. Where are you all? Had a couple of trips to Santa Monica to study the J100 with Kenny Rubin and the J500 with Steve Butter field. I also trained many AM staff at their training centre in Norwich.
  - author: David Geddes (Fremont CA)
    date: Friday 21st August 2015
    text: |-
      Ken Rubin!! I remember you. You truly were the lead designer on the J100. I also remember Steve Butterfield and Matt, and Frank Hill. I was a repair technician in the lab at the time.\
      Later I worked on the Addressograph/Multigraph Credit Card Embosser (can''t remember the exact name), and installed one in the Bank of Ireland office in Dublin. It was the very first credit card machine in all of Ireland. I also remember Dave Smead, and would love to connect with all of you folks.\
      Nowadays I am the director of system architecture at a silicon valley ASIC startup.
  - author: Ken Rubin (USA)
    date: Monday 26th January 2015
    text: Anyone need images of the J100 and J500 Datapro awards? I still have pretty much a full set of framed awards.
  - author: Fred Roney (Schaumburg, IL/US)
    date: Monday 3rd November 2014
    text: |-
      http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1982/02/06/page/61/article/business\
      Link to a very short 2/6/1982 Chicago Tribune article on AM selling Jacquard to Applied Technology Ventures of Santa Ana, CA.
  - author: Fred Roney (Schaumburg, IL/US)
    date: Monday 3rd November 2014
    text: |-
      http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1982/02/06/page/61/article/business\
      Link to a very short 2/6/1982 Chicago Tribune article on AM selling Jacquard to Applied Technology Ventures of Santa Ana, CA.
  - author: Fred Roney (Schaumburg, IL/US)
    date: Monday 3rd November 2014
    text: |-
      http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1982/02/06/page/61/article/business\
      Link to a very short 2/6/1982 Chicago Tribune article on AM selling Jacquard to Applied Technology Ventures of Santa Ana, CA.
  - author: sean
    date: Wednesday 22nd October 2014
    text: I worked on the Manafacture of the M55
  - author: Steve Baker (UK)
    date: Monday 3rd March 2014
    text: I joined Jacquard from Wang in 1979. (Hi Jenny and Tim) the Type Rite software was good, but boy was the hardware dated compared to Wang. If only the J500 could have multiuser. After 9 months it was all over - I sometimes wonder if the £80ks worth of J100 I sold to an insurance co. inBristol ever shipped. Never mind I earned a lot of commission!
  - author: Tom Morgan (Vallejo, CA)
    date: Wednesday 7th November 2012
    text: Here is a hi back to Ken Rubin - Laura and I still remember flying out to Riverside with you for dinner one evening and spending a weekend at Mammoth with you as well. Hope things are good with you - those were fun times back in Santa Monica
  - author: DAVID BROWN (RIVERSIDE CA.)
    date: Sunday 11th March 2012
    text: I WAS THE COMPANY DELIVERY DRIVER FOR JACQUARD SYSTEMS IN SANTA MONICA CA. IN THE BEGINING DAYS OF THE COMPANY IN THE 70''S MY FIRST JOB. I REALLY LIKED THE PEOPLE I WORKED WITH AND FOR I GOT LAID OFF WHEN A INVESTER CAME ON BOARD HATED TO GO BUT I WENT TO IBM AND BECOME A RICH MAN IN THE COMPUTER BUSINESS. THANKS JAQUARD SYSTEMS FOR LETTING ME GO OR I JUST MAY HAVE BEEN A DRIVER ALL MY LIFE. FUN TIMES
  - author: DAVID BROWN (RIVERSIDE CA.)
    date: Sunday 11th March 2012
    text: I WAS THE COMPANY DELIVERY DRIVER FOR JACQUARD SYSTEMS IN SANTA MONICA CA. IN THE BEGINING DAYS OF THE COMPANY IN THE 70''S MY FIRST JOB. I REALLY LIKED THE PEOPLE I WORKED WITH AND FOR I GOT LAID OFF WHEN A INVESTER CAME ON BOARD HATED TO GO BUT I WENT TO IBM AND BECOME A RICH MAN IN THE COMPUTER BUSINESS. THANKS JAQUARD SYSTEMS FOR LETTING ME GO OR I JUST MAY HAVE BEEN A DRIVER ALL MY LIFE. FUN TIMES
  - author: Tim Trent (United Kingdom)
    date: Sunday 19th February 2012
    text: Just found Wikipedia didn''t have a page about AMJ. It does now. Hope I did enough on it that it doesn''t get $d. Loads to add, but I cant find many secondary sources, the kind they need to cite things in the articles.
  - author: Tom Chesek (Harrisburg Pennsylvania/USA)
    date: Friday 20th February 2009
    text: I received training on the J100 system and service them while employed at AM International in Harrisburg PA. PA Blue Shield, Book of the Month Club, and Hershey Foods are the customers that I recall using the J100 systems. I still have my 1979 Data Pro Honor Roll coffee mug with AM Jaquard Systems logo on it. I wish I had at least an electronic copy of a J100 system brochure.
  - author: Ken Rubin (Seattle WA USA)
    date: Friday 12th December 2008
    text: |-
      For the UK folks, I had the pleasure of meeting up with Norman Tinklin back a decade or so ago. I''m in London this week and his cheery voice is still on his phone answer message so may be I''ll have a chance to say hello again. Cheers to all!

      Ken
  - author: John Lerno
    date: Monday 7th July 2008
    text: I remember doing the cats eye adjustment on the old pertec drives...remember when if you made the mistake and jiggled the drive how the head would slam back ....those were the days
  - author: John Rouse (England)
    date: Wednesday 25th June 2008
    text: |-
      I worked for Varityper, and was trained on the Jacquard machines. I even went to Pertec for a course on disk drives. I remember the "little man" adjustment, to get the voice coil operated heads to align with the data tracks.

      I spent some time at High Wycombe on the commissioning, with a real character called Fritz - the first engineer I'd met who wore a bow tie.
  - author: John McGrann (Ireland)
    date: Thursday 4th May 2006
    text: I worked on J100's and J500's for a Jacquard distributor in Ireland, Memory Computers, I still have a J100 brochure. I wrote a system for a J100 using a product called Data-Rite, does anybody remember it ? I reckon that I was one of the few who used it. I moved from development into sales and sold J500 Type-Rite word processors, we used to beat Wang quite a bit. We had a guy Terry Fossey who decoded the J500 O/S and made it mulit user so we coul sell 3 user J500s !!
  - author: Ken Rubin (Seatle, WA)
    date: Wednesday 7th April 2004
    text: |-
      Hi Tom, et al;

      Thought I'd add a note since I am the one who breathed the first breath of life into the first J100. I recall working with Tom and I'm sure he remembers me - the others, well... you can blame me I suppose.

      Cy, there's a good chance that the motherboard you got from Steve and Skip was based on the redesign that was completed just before AM international sold off the Jacquard Assets. I still have the DataPro Awards that were bestowed on the J100 and J500 - they nicely cover blank wallspace in my den/office. Jacquard built a lot of systems and was one of the key players and very instrumental in forging the way for desktop systems.
  oc_id: 527
  source:
    url: https://web.archive.org/web/20230208113648/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=527
    date: '2023-02-08'
---

The Jacquard J100 and J500 Videocomputer line was developed at the home offices of Jacquard Systems, Inc. in Santa Monica, California. Development started in 1975 and by 1977 the first units of the J100 were installed.

The base unit included two 8" single-sided floppy drives and could be expanded to up to 14 users. The OS was Jacquard's own DOS. The CPU of the J100 was National Semiconductor's IMP16 microprocessor and the J500 - a follow-on single-user system - was implemented using the AMD Bit-slice technology CPU architecture. The J500, thus a multifunction monopost system, could be used for wordprocessing, mass-mailing, accountancy or stock control.

The J505 version featured the same motherboard plus a piggyback that allowed 2 additional terminals to be connected.

The AM Jacquard J-500 was composed of a central unit keyboard/monitor and two disk-drives. From 1 to 4 optional hard-disks could be added. The hard drives were the Pertec 14" with (I think) 10MB fixed and 5MB removable ans also the Control Data 14" 80MB drive.

The parallel printer port was a 12-bit port, unlike the standard 8-bit Centronics. The Xerox Diablo 1640 daisy wheel printer could be attached to it as well as many other printers.

The J500 was unique at its time because all of the CPU and ALU was stored and executed from a bank of 32 Proms (Programable Read Only Memory). The J100 could actually handle 64 interupts.This included stations and printers. It was limited to 16 because of hashing.

Display was performed by the same ROM/microcode/ALU that provided the main processing, timesliced in alternate 'quads' - 4 microcode instructions per process cycle.

Special thanks to **Randy Larson** who sent us many pictures and information.