2nd Carrera Founder Leaves to Start Competing Business

Bruce Faust, one of four founders of Carrera Computers Inc. in Laguna Hills, has left the computer design company to start a competing firm.

Brad Frye, president of Carrera, said Faust left because of “philosophical differences” among the founders.

Both young companies focus on designing computers based on so-called “reduced instruction set computing,” or RISC chips, which run faster than conventional computers by using pared-down instructions to perform tasks.

Faust started NEKOTech Inventory Conversion Inc. to build “speed demon” computers based on chips made by Digital Equipment Corp. NEKOTech is showing its first computers this week at the Comdex computer trade show in Atlanta.

Faust and several other Carrera employees left Carrera to start NEKOTech in February. He started Carrera in May, 1991, to build computers that are based on high-performance chips made by MIPS Technologies and DEC. Mark Perry, another co-founder of Carrera, left in January to join a family business.

Meanwhile, Carrera’s two remaining founders, Brad and Rod Frye, have hired replacements and are showing their own competing computer hardware at the trade show as well.

Brad Frye said Carrera reported sales of about $1 million since its computers hit the market last August.