Phoenix Technologies Ltd, Norwood, Massachusetts is to acquire Costa Mesa, California-based developer of system and video BIOS and PCMCIA integrated circuit memory card driver developer Quadtel Corp. It will pay 1.3m new Phoenix shares, valuing Quadtel at about $10.9m.Phoenix also said it is making a product line of its BIOS upgrades available directly to end users for the first time. The upgrades will enable support for large-capacity hard disks, especially IDE drives on older systems such as the IBM Corp AT and Compaq Computer Corp DeskPro 286; support for 3.5 floppy drives on 5.25 machines; provide local area network compatibility, and improve the running of newer versions of some applications and utilities. Phoenix has licensed Micro Firmware Inc to handle its PhoenixBIOS upgrades for end users.
