Imagineering was a software distribution company founded by Jodee Rich in 1981. It grew rapidly before running into financial trouble in the late 1980s. Imagineering was sold to First Pacific in 1990 at which time Jodee Rich left the business.[1] Graham Pickles, managing director of sister company Tech Pacific, took the helm of the group and merged the two businesses together under the Tech Pacific banner in 1990.
The company was most famous for distributing the following product ranges:
In addition, the company maintained a factory in Taipei, Taiwan, where it manufactured its own line of Personal computers under the "Ultra By Imagineering" brandname. The majority of these were based on components manufactured by DTC computer. These machines proved very popular with home and small business users in Australia and New Zealand, because of their low entry price, the availability of telephone support and full service in case of failure. A rough chronology of the Ultra product family was:
Mid 1987: The original Ultra XT was created by Tony Ianuzzelli. It used a 6 MHz 8088 CPU, was supplied with 640KB of RAM, a single 5.25" floppy diskette drive, CGA graphics and an optional 20Mb hard disk drive.
June 1988: The second generation Ultra XT was created by Lindsay Vagg.