introduced in 1977. William Bradley designed a host of custom products based on the 3870. Fairchild later licensed the 3870 back from Mostek. Mostek also produced ROM chips on demand, as well as the chips powering the Hammond electronic organ. MK3880 During the introduction of the Z80, Zilog needed a production partner while they got their own fabs set up. They first signed a production agreement with Synertek, but the company later demanded they sign a second source deal, allowing Synertek to produce and sell the design on their own. Zilog refused, so the agreement was broken. Zilog then selected Mostek as the only other company capable of building a +5V device (as opposed to +5 and +12). Mostek had developed advanced layout methods which were applied to the Z80, resulting in the device being shrunk by 20%. Mostek was able to sign a second source deal for what it called the MK3880. The Z80 eventually became the most popular microcomputer family, and was used in millions of embedded devices as well as in many home computers and computers using the de facto standard CP/M operating system, such as the Osborne, Kaypro, and TRS-80 models. Others Mostek sought new microprocessor partners and negotiated deals with Intel to gain second sourcing rights to the Intel 8086 microprocessor family and future x86 designs and with Motorola for rights to the Motorola 68000 and VME. Mostek thus secured rights to every microprocessor family that would be important for the next 25 years. The Intel x86 microprocessors would go on to become the brains for the IBM PC, while the Motorola 68000 would become the heart of the Apple Macintosh line. However, as with its telecomm business, Mostek chose not to aggressively follow-up its entry into microprocessors—instead increasing its concentration on DRAMs. Decline in the face of Asian competition Mostek was bought by United Technologies (UTC) in 1979 for US$345M to prevent an unfriendly takeover from Gould at the 10th anniversary of the company's founding, when a large block of stock options controlled by Sprague Electric became vested. The leadership UTC chose for its semiconductor division did not appreciate the up-front investment required or the long time for ROI. UTC at first invested hundreds of millions to expand Mostek, then hundreds of millions more trying to keep the company going during the various semiconductor and videogame crashes of the early 1980s. UTC sacrificed Mostek's