Sometimes it's very fun to be taking a trip through memory lane.  With QNX turning 30 this year, I've been hauling old QNX manuals out of storage, conveniently archived just feet away from my desk, and doing a bit of research for some interesting tidbits to share for our birthday celebration.  Looking through all those old typewriter banged out manuals with the occasional white-out and hand-penned corrections brought back fond memories.

I wasn't using QNX back in those days.  I was programming in both BASIC and 6502 assembly on an Atari 800.  Writing my own games, truth be told, since I didn't have lots of spare cash on a paper route income.  And I was typing in listings from magazines like "Compute!"--yes, in fact, once upon a time the best way to get programs was to type them in from a listing in a magazine.  Hard to believe in an era where you can download gigabytes of free software while sitting on your living-room sofa.

At that time, QNX was called Quantum Software Systems.  And Quantum Software System's first product was called QUNIX: a microkernel-based OS that felt a little like UNIX.  AT&T was very polite in requesting that we change the name, and so QNX was born.

QUNIX released as product in 1981

Description: First commercial microkernel OS

Inventor: Dan Dodge and Gordon Bell

Impact on civilization: Showed it was possible to have a multi-user, multi-tasking, multiprocessor OS with real-time performance running on a PC with only 64K of RAM. It and its successors (QNX2, QNX4, QNX Neutrino RTOS) spawned many uses in reliability-critical industries.

What else was going on at the time of QNX's first product?  Two other notable software products were created right around then: one about 6 months before, and one about 6 months after.  You'll certainly recognize one.  If you've been around in this industry for long enough, you should recognize both.

Visicalc introduced on PC in 1981

Description: First commercial spreadsheet

Inventor: Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston

Impact on civilization: Made personal computers a serious business tool instead of a hobbyist or game machine.  Visicalc was first created in 1979, but it effectively launched the Personal Computing industry, by bringing IBM to the party in 1981.

I remember this pretty distinctly--my Dad bought Visicalc for the Atari 800.  It made heavy use of the slash key for doing almost anything.  It was pretty limited compared to Excel.  At the time, it was amazing to see numbers magically recalculated all over the page when you changed one little thing.  All done in 48K.  If you're feeling nostalgic, you can run a real version of this on your Windows PC for old-tymers found on Dan Bricklin's website.

MSDOS 1.0 released in 1982

Description: Common PC OS

Promoter/Inventor: Bill Gates / Tim Paterson

Impact on civilization: Created a common architecture for software development, spawning an industry.  And created the world’s wealthiest person. (

As of Mar 10, 2010 due to Mr. Gates' generous philanthropy and the depressed state of the stock market he was bumped down to 

the second wealthiest.)

By the time the IBM PC XT came out in 1983, I was gainfully employed writing statistical quality control software.  Yes, it was in high school, but a real job, nonetheless.  A 5MB hard drive--WHOA.  That was big time.  How on earth could you fill the whole thing?  (Easy--put one single mp3 song on it.)  In the intervening year, Microsoft DOS 1.0 had been replaced by MS-DOS 2.0.  A major improvement and still with lots of warts, but it was the OS of choice for business applications.  GW-BASIC was the language that my company used back then.  I remember the good times when we'd have compiled basic programs give the occasional "Syntax error".    Think about that for a second.  It's a lot funnier now than it was at the time.  We eventually replaced GW-Basic with Turbo Pascal, but 

I digress.  Maybe that's fodder for another blog.

This just in: QNX announced this morning that its technology has been licensed for more than 17 million in-vehicle systems — an increase of 130 percent since 2008.

More than 200 vehicle models now ship with QNX-based infotainment and telematics systems. Moreover, the QNX CAR application platform now has 60+ participants, including 17 automotive OEMs and 26 automotive suppliers...

"So you want to submit your wireless device to our awards program. Can we see it?"

"Well, actually, I don't have it on me."

"Oh, that's too bad."

"Not really."

"What do you mean, not really?"

"Because I drove here in it."

The LTE Connected Car demonstrates how a combination of QNX technology and 4G mobile networks is poised to transform the driving experience -- a combination that will, in effect, redefine the "mobile" in automobile.

I've discussed the LTE Connected Car many times in this blog, so I won't blabber about it today. I will say, however, that the CTIA emerging technology awards program has just shortlisted the LTE Connected Car in two award categories. In fact, you can even vote for the car should the fancy take you...

If you've been following this blog series on the history of QNX, you'll know that I'm still making my way through the 1980s. So I hope you don't mind if I temporarily leap ahead 20 years; I was going to post this story when we got to 2004, but something happened last week that made me change my mind.

Confused yet? Well, brace yourself. Because this story really begins in 1998...

Is it just me, or do people need to feel terrified of something? A couple of years ago, it was BPA in plastic bottles. Today, it's software and microelectronics in cars.

If recent headlines are anything to go by, in-car microelectronics are wreaking havoc on our highways...