Walt Schroth was employed by a manufacturing company in the 1970s that designed and supplied cabling for the early mainframe and minicomputer manufacturers, including Wang, Digital, HP, IBM, and Sun Micro.  During that period, every computer company created and maintained a unique, proprietary mechanism for moving data between machines.  In order to meet this need, his firm created and marketed a wide range of connectivity items that were unique to certain brands and products via retail stores.

Walt was persuaded that a more uniform and standardized solution was required after observing the inconvenience and long-term limitations of the hundreds of necessary variations and options during the early 1980s surge of personal computers and peripherals (such as modems, printers, and scanners).

Seeing the acceptance of