Hello and welcome to the 4th and final episode of Texas Technology History.
Just as a recap, the whole point of this series was to show that Texas was home to many, if
not most of the early technology innovations of the computer age.
In the first episode, we had a look at the old 3D Realms buildings and talked with a
former employee.
Then I managed to locate the old Dallas Semiconductor building where they used to make the old Dallas
clock chips, but discovered it had been torn down and replaced with a sports facility.
In the second episode we took a road trip to Houston and then I met up with Johnny Hemberger
and we had a look at the DeLorean factory in Humble, Tx.
I also managed to locate the original Compaq factory where the portable 1 was manufactured,
and we also had a quick look at the NASA facilities down there.
And in the 3rd episode we took a road trip to San Antonio to look at the old Datapoint
factory and corporate headquarters.
This was the birthplace of the CRT based terminal, the microprocessor, and local area networks
as we know them.
Then we went to Austin and had a look at the current Dell facility, but then later managed
to track down the original PC’s Limited factory.
We also had a look at the IBM facility there where they used to manufacture the selectric
typewriters and the IBM 5155 portable computer.
Then we looked at some of the old buildings for Origin systems, but probably more interesting
was seeing Richard Garriot’s medieval village called Castleton, as well as the Necropolis
geocache.
And so that’s all the stuff we’ve done so far, if you missed any of those episodes,
I’d recommend you go back and watch them.
Now I want to take a moment to talk about Texas Instruments.
Sure, they are known for things like the speak and spell, their calculators, and the TI-99/4
computer.
Their main headquarters is right here in Dallas right next to the high five.
But they have quite a few other locations as well.
But this location is somewhat significant because this is where Jack Kilby’s office
was.
Kilby, of course, was the inventor of the integrated circuit.
Or as some people might refer to it, the microchip.
And without this invention, most computers and technology as we know it wouldn’t exist
today.
TI actually keeps a recreation of Jack Kilby’s office in their headquarters with everything
pretty much laid out exactly as it would have been in the 1960s.
And they are still manufacturing integrated circuits here today.
In fact, you can crack open almost any sort of computer or electronic device made over
the last 40 years and there’s a good bet you’ll find at least a few parts that were
manufactured by Texas Instruments.
And, if we go back to the the 1980s, Texas Instruments was producing the TI-99 computers
in their manufacturing plant in Lubbock, TX.
The building is still there, but I won’t be taking a trip out there to see it as it
is just too darned far.
And of course, we had Tandy computers being manufactured in Fort Worth, while Apple was
manufacturing computers nearby in Dallas.
Compaq was pumping out IBM clones down in Houston, while IBM themselves were making
portables over in Austin.
And of course more clones were being made in PCs Limited, otherwise known as Dell just
right down the road.
We still had Datapoint going strong down in San Antonio, Atari manufacturing stuff over
in El Paso, and a few other smaller companies like CompuAdd were also around at the time.
So this is what the computer manufacturing scene in Texas looked like during the 1980s.
During the 1990s, the landscape changed a bit.
What we had left was AST Computer, Compaq, and Dell, the 3 largest computer manufacturers
building their computers here in Texas.
But, For the moment, I want to take us back to the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
I’ve already shown you where Compaq and Dell were located.
But what about AST?
Well, there were actually two facilities in Fort Worth.
The first one I’ll tell you about was located at 1001 North East Loop 820 in what is now
just called NorthBrook Center.
Currently this place is split up into several smaller business now.
But at the time AST occupied this entire building.
Now for those who don’t know, or who may have forgotten, I actually worked for AST
doing tech support for 3 years from 1996 to 1998.
So every day for 3 years I drove into this parking lot, parked my car, and then walked
up those stairs to go into the building and check in through security.
There were hundreds of people that worked in this building.
A lot of them were tech support like me.
But we also did all warranty repairs here.
So if somebody needed to send their laptop in for repair, this is where it went.
We also did support here in this building for Tandy, Grid, and certain Samsung laptops.
But no manufacturing was done here.
That happened over here at 2400 Western Center Blvd.
This building currently belongs to BNSF railway and serves as their technology office building.
Of course, before these buildings belonged to AST, they first belonged to Tandy.
That’s right, just a few years earlier this building on Western Center blvd was building
Tandy desktops.
In fact, Tandy/Radio Shack had a huge presence in the city of Fort Worth.
Their main headquarters was located here in downtown at 150 Throckmorton street.
And to top it off, they even had an entire shopping mall called the Tandy Center which
was also located right in downtown.
It was a pretty nice place with a great food court and an ice skating rink in the center.
In fact it was one of the very few places one could go ice skating in this area back
in the 1970 and 80s.
They even had a dedicated little subway system that serviced the Tandy Center to a nearby
parking area.
This is the only subway that has ever existed in the Dallas/Ft.Worth area.
And was the only privately owned subway ever in the United States.
Looking at this original photo from the late 1970s, you can the shopping mall portion right
here.
And of course, the two towers on either side, which was Radioshack headquarters.
Unfortunately, the Tandy Center mall was demolished in 2011.
And, of course Tandy corporation is long since bankrupt.
What remains today are the two twin towers, with a parking garage now in the middle and
of course this building over here which used to be Tandy Corporation datacenter.
Now this building is actually owned by Tarrant county and used for county business such as
permits and stuff like that.
Of course AST wasn’t the only large tech support facility in the area.
There was also Microsoft.
There are actually 3 different locations.
The first one we’ll talk about was the support center located at 1321 Greenway drive.
This was often referred to by employees as the “canal” location, presumably because
right behind the building is a canal.
I mean, I guess that makes sense, right?
OK, so I’m standing in front of what used to be Microsoft Tech support back in the 1990s.
They would have done tech support here for Windows 95 and Front-page, and office, and
other types of consumer games like flight simulator and things like that.
The building is currently owned by somebody called Prime source, I don’t even know what
they do here, but yeah, if you ever called Microsoft tech support this is where you probably
talked to.
The other location was at 1212 Corporate Drive.
This was referred to as the “hilltop” location by employees.
OK, so I’m standing here in front of the second location for Microsoft that was used
back in the day.
This particular office was run concurrently with the canal building that we talked about
just a little bit earlier.
This particular one is where they did all of the support for the business products like
Microsoft Windows NT and Sequel Server and Exchange and stuff like that.
What I’ve been told by some former employees that used to work here is that they were really
glad to move out of this building because it had constant problems with sewage and water
leakage and stuff like that.
And of course there is the current Microsoft facility located at 7000 State Highway 161.
So, I’m actually standing in front of the current Microsoft Facility.
Now, what they did was they actually merged both of the old facilities into these two
enormous buildings here.
This is actually where they do tech support for both consumer and enterprise products
now.
So, if you call Microsoft tech support, there’s a good change you’re going to be talking
to somebody in one of these buildings.
One thing I found particularly bizarre is the posted speed limit of 9 miles per hour
in all of the parking lots.
I mean, how did they determined that 9 miles per hour was just the right number?
So moving away from software and back to hardware for a moment, let’s have a look at the old
Cyrix building, which currently sits abandoned.
It’s located at 2703 North Central Expressway.
OK, so here I am in front of the old Cyrix building.
Now this is probably one of the coolest looking buildings.
The architecture of this building is really fascinating.
I don’t know exactly when it was made but it looks like definitely something from the
sixties, seventies, or eighties, and definitely looks like the type of building where there
would have been some really incredible discoveries or you know, research done here in a building
like this.
It’s really unfortunate that it sits abandoned like this today in the middle of a busy city.
In fact, there are so many trees around the building it’s really difficult to even get
good pictures of it.
Of course I’m sure when the building was built I’m sure these trees were mostly not
here.
Standing in the parking lot is almost deafening because there is so much noise from the freeway
running right next to it.
In fact, it appears there is some sort of accident there today, which is not uncommon
for Dallas.
If you go up to the window you can actually get a peek inside, but there isn’t much
to see.
The only picture I could find of the building was from their website using the way back
machine, which had this low-resolution photo and you can just make out the Cyrix logo on
the side.
Another manufacturing facility also existed here back in the early 1980s, which was Apple
computer.
OK, so I’m standing it front of what used to be an Apple factory.
Now, this one was really difficult to find because the address is 2724 Realty Rd.
But, the address of this building is actually completely different.
In fact you can see up in the front it says 1215 and it’s actually the address is on
a completely separate road.
It’s on Marsh lane, I think.
So, it was really confusing trying to figure it out.
So, what I figured out is that the building has been reconfigured and the front of the
building has been placed here, which obviously they wanted on a different road, so we’re
going to go around to the back of the building and see where the original entrance would
have been during the time of Apple.
OK, this is what I believe to be the original entrance back when this was an apple factory.
Now, it was an apple factory from I think around the year 1980 to 1985 and what they
produced here was the Apple IIe, the Apple Iic, the Apple Lisa, and of course the Macintosh
XL, which was basically the same thing.
And I think this was the original entrance because this is realty road here, which is
what the original address was, which would actually make sense because this is where
people would have come in and gone to work, and I think they’ve just reconfigured the
building so that the front is on a different street now.
But, this is where the magic happened!
So, we've covered quite a bit of stuff here in the Dallas area, but I still have a few
more places of interest to cover.
One you might find interesting is Mouser Electronics.
Well, I at least find it interesting because I used to work there from 1995 to 1996.
For those that aren’t familiar with it, Mouser is an enormous electronic parts distributor.
They started off as a mail-order company working from a catalog.
This is the catalog that was in use most of the time I worked there.
After I left, the catalog continued to grow and evolve and eventually became this monstrous
book!
And this is the last paper catalog they ever produced.
Let’s compare to the one from 1995.
And of course when the internet became a thing, they transitioned largely to online sales
and support, and so now they don’t actually even have a paper catalog anymore.
I used to work in this building complex here off of highway 287.
This building here was the corporate offices, which is now just a multi-purpose office building
with a lot of small clients.
Over here, this was the warehouse where all of the orders were shipped.
Of course, Mouser has long since moved.
They built a brand new facility that is an order of magnitude larger.
I love the logo up on the roof.
This building complex over here is also part of Mouser as well.
Fortunately, I was able to get an interview with their VP of North American sales, which
we had to do outside due to COVID, of course.
We’ve been here since the mid eighties.
And back then, it was really critical that we have a shipping hub in the middle of the
country.
So, we had an office in California, which is where Mouser actually really started, and
we built an office in New Jersey so we had the coasts covered, but we needed to have
an office in Texas.
And so, as the story has been handed down to me, Mr. Mouser came to Texas and said “Hey
look, I’m looking for something that’s near the airport, got a compass out and tried
to find something that was within a certain amount of miles of the DF/W airport, found
a building in Mansfield, Texas, that’s before there really was much of a Mansfield, Texas,
and built the corporate headquarters here.
Our CEO, Glen Smith, has been with the company for over 40 years.
He was here even when I worked here.
Yeah, did you Glen?
I never met him.
But I know the name.
Really smart guy.
Great guy.
His leadership has been with the company really since the beginning.
So approximately how many packages do you think you ship a day?
Oh man, it’s a lot.
It’s a lot.
I’m glad we’re here right now this time of day, in the morning, because if we were
here a little bit later all of these trucks would be coming in and out.
You can see all of the bay doors where things are going out.
It’s about 65,000 to 75,000 lines that are going out a day.
So, considering the average package has a few lines in it, it’s somewhere along the
lines of 20,000 packages that are going out per day!
I know I’ve ordered plenty of them myself over the last few decades.
Thank you for doing that, we appreciate it!
So, you know, an interesting thing is used to, the go to for that would be just to drive
down to Radio Shack.
But, they’re gone.
And then there’s Fry’s Electronics, which is almost gone and even when they weren’t
gone, their electronics section was never properly stocked.
So you wind up never finding what you’re looking for.
So, a different topic, I noticed looking at the satellite view of the building, there’s
a giant Mouser logo on the top.
I wish we could take you on the roof.
There actually is a big M, the mouser logo on the roof.
What was the thinking behind that?
Well, you know we’re close to the airport, lots of folks fly in and out and look out
the window and we thought well this is a great opportunity to get folks to say there’s
the place where I’m getting all of my tech.
That’s where I’m getting my components.
So the next time you’re flying in or out, look out the window you may see the Mouser
roof.
It wasn’t just mean for Google Earth, then?
We could have photoshopped that, I guess.
Well, maybe not on Google Earth.
But yeah, it’s actually painted on the roof.
Tell me what you think some of the biggest changes are since I worked here in 1994?
I mean besides the fact the building looks like it is like 20 times bigger than it was
when I worked here.
We should have done the math to see how many times bigger it was.
Just for one thing, I’ll give you an example.
When I worked here, everybody used dumb-terminals.
My desk, I just had an amber screen dumb terminal, I didn’t even have an actual computer at
my desk.
So, I imagine the technology is improved quite a bit.
I think our technology has improved quite a bit.
I hope so.
So the two main jobs I had when I was here, we can get you in with a headset.
I mean, do you want to come in and get back on the phones and answer a few questions.
We’re super busy, we could use your help.
My first job was actually an inspector in the warehouse.
So, they would pick the orders by hand.
I guess, from what I’ve been told they, it’s all automated now.
But they would pick the orders by hand and they would bring me a bucket and then I would
look at the pick list and I would make sure that “oh yeah, that’s the right value
of capacitors or that’s the right whatever, and then I would sign my name on it that it
was inspected and then it would go off to be shipped.
That’s my first job.
I did that for like a year, and then they made me a catalog tech rep.
So yeah, I’d be the one answering the phone and they would say “yeah I’m looking for
such and such part, do you have this or that.”
And I would be like “oh yes, on page 67 on the catalog right here we have that part.
It does this or that.”
And I was supposed to know that kind of stuff.
That’s what I did for like another year.
You know, those things, as big as we’ve gotten, we haven’t outgrown those things.
So, we’re still really really careful about what we ship.
To make sure we’re shipping the right stuff.
You’re right, a lot of it is automated now.
But still the process of getting parts correct is up to people.
And then tech.
You know, so if you call in and you have a question you say “hey look should I use
this one or should I use this one” We still have techs.
Real people.
That will answer your phone calls.
So, those are important jobs.
And as big as we are, we still have real people.
I’ve got one more question for you, Can I get one of those pretty blue shirts?
Well, you betcha you can!
Yeah, in fact, I’ve got some Mouser stuff for you!
In fact Coby gave me an entire bag of Mouser swag.
I did get the shirt I wanted, along with a mousepad.
And this is cool, it’s a ruler PCB with common footprints of components on it.
But these have to be the coolest pieces of swag.
They are Mouser brand Rubik’s cubes!
How cool is that!
There was one other company I had originally planned to showcase in this series, which
was ID Software.
This is the company behind games such as Commander Keen, Doom, and Quake.
Originally based out of Mesquite, Texas, their current headquarters is in Richardson.
However, I don’t think I’m going to be able to cover them.
I had planned to go to numerous conventions this Summer and I had some fairly elaborate
speeches that I had created that I was going to give at those conventions.
And I was going to record those and turn those into episodes for the channel.
Unfortunately, all of that got cancelled with the COVID-19 pandemic.
So, I sort of envisioned this series as a replacement for that.
And I had originally planned as many as potentially 8 episodes because there’s a lot of information
to cover about Texas Tech History.
Unfortunately, the videos simply haven’t been as I would have imagined them to be,
in fact every one of them has cost me considerably more to produce than any money that I’ve
made from it.
As such, I decided that episode number 4 would be the final episode.
And I’ve just simply taken a lot of footage from the last the 10 months that I’ve recorded
and consolidated this all into one last final episode.
There were a lot of other things that I really wanted to do with this series, for example
I wanted to travel to El Paso and find the old Atari factory and then go right over the
border into New Mexico to find out where they buried all of the ET cartridges.
And a lot of little fun things like that I wanted to do, but it’s just not going to
happen at this point.
But, I appreciate everyone who has watched the series so far.
I hope that this series will at least be good for keeping track of where some of these things
happened.
Believe it or not, I struggled to find some of this information.
Finding many of these locations actually required old-school style investigations.
I had to read through tons of old documents and ask around all over the internet.
With some locations like the Compaq offices, I just had clues like what the building looked
like, and just spend hours on google street view looking at buildings until I found what
I was looking for.
The point is, most of these locations couldn’t be found with a simple google search.
So, I hope I’ve at least made a contribution to history as I’ve now properly documented
all of these places.
And, of course, I hope I achieved the main goal of the video, which is to set the record
straight about my home state of Texas and show what life here is actually like, and
to show how much innovation actually occurred right here.