Was the whole "roundtech" thing, with the decals on the chainrings and whatnot a response to Shimano's Biopace?

It's kinda funny to see a company hyping the roundness of their rings

As you say, it was SR's version of biopace, apparently some riders prefer it. The rings are round, but not necessarily circular.

Ummm, IIRC the "Round-Tech" rings are quite circular. Again IIRC, the name was a not-so-subtle jab at Biopace.

SP
OC, OR

So that's different than SR's Ovaltech?

I had a set of Ovaltech rings on a late 80s Trek that I had for a short while. I really liked them.

i thought i remembered "ovaltech".. i suppose roundtech was to ensure people knew they were indeed round

I'm rocking one on my Alpina.. it looks and feels pretty darn round

It made me laugh out loud

Absolutely correct. In the mid/late '80's, Shimano insisted that everyone and their Uncle Joe convert to non-round rings, since, y'know, we can prove they're better. After a year or two, they came out with "Biopace II", which was less eccentric. By the early '90's Biopace was dead.

When I was at Euro-Asia Imports, we would swap round SR rings on Shimano cranksets as a service to our customers. I'm pretty sure we did it just for the difference in cost of the rings. I know that there's still a bunch of boxes of Shimano Biopace chainrings sitting there. They'll probably be unearthed thousands or years from now, and the archeologist will say "what were they thinking?"...

Kind of reminds me of the "Oliver's yes tubes" system.
https://petefagerlin.com/yes_tubes/index.htm

Doh!

Yes, I was thinking of Ovaltech.

Still, I question the idea that an oval, or even a weird non-elipse like Biotech, isn't 'round.' They're all round.