[HN Gopher] Dead Brands of Computing Past: Soltek
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Dead Brands of Computing Past: Soltek
        
       Author : zdw
       Score  : 27 points
       Date   : 2023-08-20 03:56 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cpushack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cpushack.com)
        
       | philkrylov wrote:
       | Soltek SL-75KAV was the first motherboard I've bought on my first
       | salary! Was working great for 5 years or so before getting
       | heavily outdated.
        
       | MrBuddyCasino wrote:
       | > _In 2005, suddenly, for no reason at all, an official press
       | release appears, voiced by the head of the public relations
       | department of Soltek, in which it appears in black and white: the
       | Taiwanese company Soltek Computer Inc. stops mass production of
       | motherboards and focuses all resources on the production of
       | computer peripherals. After such a statement, analysts of the
       | global information technology market unanimously stated that this
       | statement is a death sentence for the brand and the company as a
       | whole._
       | 
       | I feel there is some crucial background info missing - why would
       | a successful mobo maker suddenly abandon the market?
        
         | _nalply wrote:
         | Perhaps someone like Elon Musk wreaking havoc in Taiwan?
        
         | jandrese wrote:
         | Maybe it had something to do with Intel shutting out all
         | competing chipset manufacturers? Maybe they figured they
         | couldn't differentiate in a marketplace where you were forced
         | to buy the Intel or AMD chips?
        
         | mpol wrote:
         | It could be that there was a process of consolidation starting.
         | Soltek was a small player and for years I simply assumed they
         | could not compete with giants like Asus, Gigabyte and MSI, that
         | were taking the hobbyist market. There was also ECS which was
         | big in the OEM market, building boards for HP and the like. It
         | could be they saw it coming that they would not exist in a few
         | years, it might be that sales and profit were already going
         | down. Just assumptions here, someone else might come along to
         | confirm or deny this.
         | 
         | By the way, I bought a Soltek board in 2003 with the then new
         | sata controller. I read the specsheet a bit fast... It said the
         | sata port would do software raid. The pata port would do ata
         | and software raid. Of course this turned out to be true :)
         | Linux crashed too often during busy I/O with regular disks. So
         | I had to buy a separate sata card.
        
       | whalesalad wrote:
       | I had a Soltek board in my rig! Loved the purple coloring.
       | https://www.flickr.com/photos/whalesalad/53131453482/
       | 
       | Here's a trip down memory lane:
       | https://www.flickr.com/photos/whalesalad/albums/721777203106...
        
         | adrian_b wrote:
         | I also had a Soltek MB that worked very well with a Pentium
         | III, but it was one with standard colors.
         | 
         | In the following years I thought that it was weird that the
         | Soltek MBs have disappeared. Because I had been very content
         | with the one that I had, I would have bought again Soltek MBs,
         | but they were no longer available.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-08-21 23:01 UTC)