Fido was originally the name of a computer I had in the lateچ
70's. I was working for a friend's consulting company (Microft Inc,چ
Falmouth MA) and we were using my computer, which was in a four footچ
high rack: 18 slot chassis with 14 cards (4MHz Z80, CPU 64K memory,چ
bootstrap ROM card (six cards so far\dots), 8" floppy ,DC-300 tapeچ
drive, and a BASF 6172 8-inch Winchester tape drive which was as fastچ
as it was unreliable. (It had a progressive and degenerative diseaseچ
we called "the whoops"; the voice-coil head positioner make theچ
customary chirping sounds; the BASF's favorite failure mode was toچ
lose track of where it's head was at (quite literally) and instead ofچ
the familiar chirping sounds as it seeked up and down the disk, itچ
made a sort of whooping sound, like a falling siren, followed by aچ
KLUNK as the positioner hit it's backstop. You had to power it down toچ
reset it. Most annoying.) The rear door was a rack of fans to keep itچ
all cool. It was extremely large and complex, and when it ran (most ofچ
the time) quite powerful. It ran PDOS (a rather nice CP/M-80چ
compatible OS) and we did "C" (BDS and Whitesmiths) and assembly workچ
on it.

It had so many parts\dots{} I called it a mongrel. I had taken toچ
calling it "Fido". Debbie took a business card, whited-out the nameچ
and wrote in "Fido, Office Computer".

The name stuck.