Condor Computer Corporation

A software development company based in Troy, Michigan, USA but later in Ann Arbor in the same state. Started selling the Condor Database for CP/M around 1980, was one of the first if not the first third party vendor of a DOS relational databases in the early 80's, albeit one that was menu driven but not programmable. Condor was for a time quite well known as a PC database company in the USA, but never marketed it product successfully outside of the country and due to lack of updates the product was starting to appear outdated by 1984 and in the latter half of the 80's it was left in the dust by the xBase tools that in addition to being relational were actually programmable and sold for the same price as Condor III.

The company got a $1.2 million injection from a venture fund set up by the Michigan state government, this was meant to finance the development of Condor 4, a programmable replacement for CIII and while that product never appears to have seen the day, an updated version of Condor III, called Condor 3 was released in 1987 at a significantly lower price than CII and the CI and CII versions were scuttled.

However an off-shoot in the form of the Condor Editor was released in late 1986 or early 1987. However marketing for the editor was atrocious, Condor CC did not even get one of the minor computer magazines to review the package, did no advertising and it died a painful death in 1988, despite having been very keenly priced start start with and having been halved in price along the way. The company disappears in 1988 or 9 and was dissolved in 1991.

Note that Condor I, II and III, are not version numbers but were all released at the same time but I and II were simply cheaper, crippled versions of CIII. The company had originally release the Condor databases for CP/M and referenced them as "series", i.e. the second release of the system was called the "series 20" and that version was ported to DOS.

Known products

• Condor I
• Condor II
• Condor III
• Condor Jr - 1984 - Flat file version of Condor III.
• Condor Editor

Links

• A review of the Condor Jr. Flat-file database - From Infoworld magazine - 1984.