California Software Products

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California Software Products Inc. (CSPI) was a software company based in Santa Ana, California, USA and originally founded in 1975 as a mainframe programming consultancy. In the early 80s it struck a deal with IBM to create a DOS compiler for the RPG II programming language used on midrange IBM systems, this resulted in the IBM DOS RPG II package, however as that package sold rather slowly IBM decided not to extend the deal and in turn CSPI decided to extend the package into an environment that emulated the System/36 RPG environment called Baby/36 that allowed users to either compile for DOS or to use the package as a runtime environment for S/36 programs on the PC.

The company tried to muscle itself into the market for IBM PC utilities in the mid 80s with a range of utilities such as the Backpak backup utility and the slightly oddball collection called California 10 PAK that had some usual PC utilities such as a system setup and memory configuration viewer alongside a text file utility that could compare, sort and view different text files, but in the pack you would also find a screen painter and a disassembler. These sold only in limited number due to lack of distribution support and were quickly taken off the market.

The company continued to market other software that targeted the midrange developer market during the next decade, but went into bankruptcy protection in 1997. A new company called "California Software Corporation" was incorporated, which bought the CSPI business. They continued developing the midrange software for a while, but over time focused more on software services and later changed their name to "Infinite Corporation".

Products

  • Baby/GUI - 1999 - GUI based development system for IBM midrange systems.
  • BABY/34
  • Baby/36 - System/36 emulator/development system.
  • Baby/38 - 1989 - System/38 emulator/development system.
  • Baby/400 - AS/400 emulator/development system.
  • Backpak - DOS Backup utility
  • California 10 PAK - utility collection
  • HelpME - DOS system and hardware analysis tools
  • MAXXIMUM - DBMS

Personnel

  • Bruce Acacio (CEO)
  • Carol Conway (Chief Financial Officer)
  • R. Dean Moore (Co-founder, Director of Development)
  • Thomas Hoyt (Director Sales)