Vintage and Rare 1980\'s TOPS FlashCard Plug-in Card, Disk, Manual & Box by Sun Microsystems v2.1
Original TOPS FlashCard Contents include box and sleeve, FlashCard, one sealed 5-1/2\" floppy disk envelope, 9-page manual, 16-page customer support guide, and a registration card.
\"TOPS FlashCard achieves an operational speed (known as FlashTalk) three times faster than AppleTalk-based networks. You get all the benefits of standard AppleTalk (ease of use, installation, low cost) while tripling your ability to move information across the network. This combination sets the standard for high performance AppleTalk while maintaining complete compatibility with AppleTalk devices.\"
The following information is not necessary for this listing. But if you have a close eye and in case you were wondering the same thing, I\'ll leave this below and save some time.
The copyright on the FlashCard reads \'1985 Centram Systems West Inc\'. Centram was a privately held company in Berkely California. Centram\'s key product was its Tops local area network software that enabled IBM and Personalikes, Apple Macintoshes and Unix machines, to share data files in real time without the need for dedicated servers, translating between the respective operating systems.
The copyright in the TOPS FlashCard manual reads \'1987 TOPS, a division of Sun Microsystems.\' Sun was a workstation manufacturer at the time and a publicly traded company in nearby Santa Clara California.
The copyright on the box sleeve reads \'1988 Sun Microsystems, Inc.\' (Notice a pattern of progression in the dates on/in this box)
A simple explanation follows:
In 1985, AppleTalk is released.
In 1987, Sun Microsystems buys Centram Systems West Inc, and renames it TOPS (Transcendental Operating System). And there it is.
Bonus tidbit:
In 2010, Oracle Corporation (another early Silicon Valley startup in California) buys Sun Microsystems, cementing its strategy to engineer hardware and software and becomes the steward of Java. In 2020, Oracle is the third-largest software company in the world in revenue and market capitalization.