Eagle Computer of Los Gatos, California was an early microcomputer manufacturing company. Spun off from Audio-Visual Laboratories (AVL), it first sold a line of popular CP/M computers which were highly praised in the computer magazines of the day. After the IBM PC was launched, Eagle produced the Eagle 1600 series, which ran MS-DOS but were not true clones.

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  • Eagle Computer of Los Gatos, California was an early microcomputer manufacturing company. Spun off from Audio-Visual Laboratories (AVL), it first sold a line of popular CP/M computers which were highly praised in the computer magazines of the day. After the IBM PC was launched, Eagle produced the Eagle 1600 series, which ran MS-DOS but were not true clones. When it became evident that the buying public wanted actual clones of the IBM PC, even if a non-clone had better features, Eagle responded with a line of clones, including a portable. The Eagle PCs were always rated highly in computer magazines. On June 8, 1983, the day of Eagle's initial public offering, its president, Dennis Barnhart, was killed in a crash of his new Ferrari, leaving the company suddenly leaderless. (He had just taken a yacht salesman to lunch. ) As news of Barnhart's death spread, the underwriters reversed the IPO, refunding the money that investors had paid for the stock, and held another IPO a few months later, which raised less capital. This dramatic timing has led people to suppose that this event caused the end of Eagle. In fact, the company continued to lead PC sales until IBM launched a multi-party lawsuit against every company that made PC clones, claiming copyright infringement of the BIOS in its machines. Unable to match IBM's resources, all the companies named settled out of court. This led to the founding of third-party companies that sold BIOSes to computer manufacturers. Eagle rewrote its BIOS, but it never recovered its lost sales. A final attempt to create a new market by selling Eagles to China fell through. The company was out of business by 1986.
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  • Eagle Computer of Los Gatos, California was an early microcomputer manufacturing company. Spun off from Audio-Visual Laboratories (AVL), it first sold a line of popular CP/M computers which were highly praised in the computer magazines of the day. After the IBM PC was launched, Eagle produced the Eagle 1600 series, which ran MS-DOS but were not true clones.
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  • Eagle Computer
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