Number Nine Visual Technology - History

History

Number Nine was founded in 1982 by Andrew Najda and Stan Bialek as Number Nine Computer Corporation in Lexington, Massachusetts. The company was renamed Number Nine Visual Technology Corporation in the early 1990s. Number Nine initially made an Apple II accelerator board, then later moved into the design and manufacture of high end PC graphics cards in 1983. Number Nine was one of the premier, higher-end graphics card companies into the early 1990s. In the mid to late 1990s, Number Nine lost market share due to price and performance competition from other video card makers, particularly Matrox, 3dfx, Diamond, and ATI. Number Nine had been slow to respond to the boom in 3D graphics, and had continued to emphasize high quality, fast 2D graphics. On December 20, 1999, Number Nine filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced a "letter-of-intent" for S3 Inc. (later S3 Graphics Co.) to buy substantially all assets and intellectual property of Number Nine. By mid 2000, Number Nine had ceased operations entirely and S3 had completed acquisition of Number Nine's assets. In 2002, two former Number Nine engineers, James Macleod and Francis Bruno, formed Silicon Spectrum, Inc., and licensed Number Nine's graphics technology from S3 to implement in FPGA devices.

For five years after Number Nine closed its doors, a former employee kept Number Nine's website up and running, with driver downloads and a forum available for self-help. A volunteer and #9 enthusiast provided regular, impromptu technical support on the forum for the last two and a half years the site was active. Several former employees checked in to help occasionally. The website finally went off the air for good in March 2005, and the URL name was taken over by an on-line gambling company.