Compaq

Compaq Computer Corporation was an American information technology company founded on February 16, 1982 that developed, sold and supported computers and related products and services. It was started by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto, three senior managers who had left Texas Instruments, and was first based in Harris County, Texas. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compatible computers, being the second company after Columbia Data Products to legally reverse engineer the BIOS of the IBM Personal Computer, and it grew to become the largest supplier of PC systems during the 1990s. It sold through dealers rather than direct and set itself apart from other clones with portability and better technology rather than price alone. Compaq was overtaken by Dell as the top global PC maker in 1999 and again in 2001, bought Digital Equipment Corporation in 1998, and was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for 25 billion US dollars in 2002. HP kept using the Compaq brand for lower-end systems until 2013.