The company began as a partnership in 1974 between Harry Garland and Roger Melen, two Stanford Ph.D. students. The company was named for their residence at Stanford University (Crothers Memorial, a Stanford dormitory reserved for engineering graduate students). Cromemco was incorporated in 1976 and their first products were the Cromemco Cyclops digital camera, and the Cromemco Dazzler color graphics interface - both groundbreaking at the time - before they moved on to making computer systems.
In December 1981, Inc. magazine named Cromemco in the top ten fastest-growing privately held companies in the U.S.[1] In 1987, it was acquired by Dynatech Corporation of Boston.
Early history
Cromemco advertisement on Page 1 of Byte Magazine, September 1976
The collaboration that was to become Cromemco began in 1970 when Harry Garland and Roger Melen, graduate students at Stanford University, began working on a series of articles for Popular Electronics magazine.[2] These articles described construction projects for the electronic hobbyist.[3][4][5] Since it was sometimes difficult for the hobbyist to find the needed parts for these projects, Garland and Melen licensed third-party suppliers to provide kits of parts. In 1973 a kit for one of these projects, an “Op Amp Tester”, was sold by a company called MITS which would later launch a revolutionary microcomputer on the cover of Popular Electronics.[6]
In 1974, Roger Melen was visiting the New York editorial offices of Popular Electronics where he saw a prototype of the MITS Altair microcomputer. Melen was so impressed with this machine that he changed his return flight to California to go through Albuquerque, where he met with Ed Roberts, the president of MITS.[7] At that meeting, Roberts encouraged Melen to develop add-on products for the Altair, beginning with the Cyclops digital camera that was slated to appear in the February 1975 issue of Popular Electronics.[8][9]
On returning to California, Melen and Garland formed a partnership to produce the Cyclops camera and future microcomputer products. They named the company “Cromemco” after the Stanford dorm (Crothers Memorial Hall) where they first began their collaboration.[10]
First products
Cromemco JS-1 analog joystick console
Melen and Garland began work on the Cyclops Camera interface for the Altair, and this spawned several other projects for their young company. There was no convenient way to store software for the Altair, other than on punched paper tape. To remedy this problem Melen and Garland went to work on designing a programmable read-only memory card they called the “Bytesaver.” The Bytesaver also could support a resident program that allowed the computer to function immediately when it was powered up, without having to first manually load a bootstrap program. The Bytesaver proved to be a very popular peripheral.[11]
There was also no way to see a Cyclops image stored in the Altair. So work began on a graphics interface card which could connect the Altair to a color TV set. This graphics interface, called the Dazzler, was introduced in the February 1976 issue of Popular Electronics.[12]
One use for an Altair Computer with a Dazzler was to play games. But there was no way to interface a game console or joystick to the Altair. So the next project was to design a joystick console and an interface card that supported an 8-bit digital channel and 7 analog channels (called the D+7A). The D+7A could do much more than just interface a joystick, however, and it was this card that allowed the Altair to be connected to the world of data acquisition and industrial computing.[13]
Cromemco called themselves “Specialists in Computer Peripherals” and had a reputation for innovative designs and quality construction.[14] They were, however, just a few steps away from offering their own computer system based on the Altair computer bus structure, named by Garland and Melen the "S-100 bus".[15][16]
From boards to systems
Cromemco Z-1 (1976)Cromemco System One (CS-1H) 1981Cromemco System 400 32-bit Super Microcomputer with XXU (1985)Cromemco System Three (1978)
The first computer released by Cromemco was the Z-1 in August 1976.[17] The Z-1 came with 8K of static RAM and used the same chassis as the IMSAI 8080 but featured the Z80 microprocessor rather than the IMSAI computer's Intel 8080 chip.[18] The Z-1 was succeeded by the Z-2 in June 1977, which featured 64K of RAM[19] and the ability to run Cromemco DOS (CDOS), a CP/M-likeoperating system.[20] The Z-2 also added a parallel interface in addition to an RS-232Cserial port and no longer included the large panel of switches that had been part of the Z-1 model.
Cromemco re-packaged their systems to produce the System One, followed by the larger System Two and System Three. The System Three, announced in 1978[21] was capable of running both FORTRAN IV and Z80 BASIC programming languages. The System Three was designed for multiuser professional use and included an optional hard disk, CRT terminal, printer and the main computer unit.[22]
Cromemco software includes CDOS, which was very much like CP/M, and CROMIX, Cromemco's own multi-user Unix-like OS.
CROMIX used banked memory, and with 448k installed, could support up to 6 users (1 bank for the system, and 1 bank for each user). CROMIX was released in 1979.
CROMIX, initially ran on the System Three and would later run on Cromemco systems using the Motorola 68000 series of microprocessors.
Cromemco S-100 Microcomputer Systems (Z-80 Processor)
In 1982, Cromemco introduced a Motorola 68000 CPU card for their systems. It was a dual-processor card (called the DPU) with both a Motorola 68000 processor and a Zilog Z-80 processor (for backward compatibility).[23] Their System One, Two, and Three computers evolved to the 100-series, 200-series, and 300-series respectively. Additionally a 400-series was introduced in a tower-style case. The DPU was followed by the increasing capable XPU and XXU cards also based on the Motorola 68000 family of processors.[24]
Cromemco also introduced the C-10 personal computer in 1982, a Z-80 floppy disk based system for the low end of the market.[25][26] It ran CDOS and came with several business software tools such as spreadsheet, word processor, and the BASIC programming language.[27]
By 1983, Cromemco employed over 500 people, had annual revenues of US$55 million, and had sold more S-100 based computer systems than any other company.[28][29] The company was wholly owned by Garland and Melen until it was sold to Dynatech Corporation in 1987. Dynatech was a major customer of Cromemco computers through its subsidiary ColorGraphics Weather Systems.[30] The European division of Cromemco reorganized as Cromemco AG and was in liquidation in 2018, but the Cromemco operation in Greece, founded in 1978 as Information Systems & Control Ltd., was continuing to operate as Cromemco Hellas S.A. in 2021.[31][32]
Engineering contributions
Cromemco was known for its engineering excellence, design creativity, and outstanding system reliability.[33] “If they hired you into their R&D Department, they gave you an office and a computer and asked you what you wanted to do” recalls Roger Sippl, an early Cromemco employee.[34] Cromemco’s engineering firsts for microcomputer systems include the first digital camera (the Cyclops Camera), the first color graphics card (the Cromemco Dazzler), the first programmable storage (the Bytesaver), the first memory bank switching, and the first Unix-like operating system (Cromix).[14][34][35]
Cromemco drew on engineering talent from Stanford University, the Homebrew Computer Club, and even its own distributors. Joe McCrate, Curt Terwilliger, Tom McCalmont, Jerry May, Herb Lewis, and Marvin Kausch had all been students of the company founders at Stanford University.[36][37][38] Ed Hall and Li-Chen Wang came to Cromemco through the Homebrew Computer Club.[39] Nik Ivancic, Boris Krtolica, and Egon Zakrajšek joined from Cromemco’s distributor in Yugoslavia where they had developed structural engineering software for Cromemco systems.[40]
Several Cromemco engineers went on to found other Silicon Valley companies. Roger Sippl,[41][42][43] Laura King, and Roy Harrington formed Informix Corporation.[34] Tom McCalmont founded REgrid Power Inc. and later McCalmont Engineering.[38] Jeff Johnson went on to found UI Wizards, Inc. and publish best-selling books on software user-interface design.[44]
Notable installations
Cromemco production line of CS-250 computers for USAF Mission Support System (1986)
In 1981, a study was commissioned by the United States Air Force Systems Command to select a microcomputer for the Theater Air Control System (TACS).[45] From a field of 149 microcomputers the Final Technical Report concluded that “the equipment offered by Cromemco is the most responsive to the general selection criteria.”[46] In the years following this study the United States Air Force became a major customer for Cromemco computers.[47][48]
Cromemco developed a special version of the CS-200 computer (called the CS-250) to meet the requirements of the Air Force's Mission Support System (MSS).[49] The CS-250 had a removable hard disk based on patented Cromemco technology.[50] The United States Air Force deployed 600 Cromemco Systems from 1985 to 1996 as Mission Support Systems for the F-15, F-16, and F-111 aircraft.[51][52] These systems received their first war time use in Operation Desert Storm in 1991.[53]
Cromemco systems were also widely used in commercial applications, including at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) where a bank of 60 Cromemco Z-2 systems were used to process trades. Each Z-2 system was populated with Cromemco Octart interface cards, with each card supporting eight terminals on the trading floor.[56] For ten years, from 1982 to 1992, all trades at the CME were processed by these systems. In 1992 the Cromemco systems were replaced by IBM PS/2 computers.[57]
Cromemco computers were the first microcomputer systems widely distributed in China.[58] In 1985 Newsweek reported that over 10,000 Cromemco computer systems had been sold to Chinese universities.[59]
Cromemco systems were also broadly adopted by U.S. television stations for generating weather and art graphics, using software developed by ColorGraphics Weather Systems. By 1986 more than 80 percent of the major-market television stations in the U.S. used Cromemco systems to produce news and weather graphics.[60]
In popular culture
In 1984, the Cromemco System One Computer appeared in the movie Ghostbusters as a computer in the Ghostbuster Laboratory.[61]
In 2011, Paul Allen commented on the Cromemco Cyclops Camera in his book, Idea Man: a memoir by the cofounder of Microsoft, noting that "The Altair even debuted a digital camera back in 1976."[62]
In 2011, Mona Simpson revealed, in a eulogy for her brother Steve Jobs, that she had considered buying a Cromemco as her first computer.[63]
The 6800 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed and first manufactured by Motorola in 1974. The MC6800 microprocessor was part of the M6800 Microcomputer System that also included serial and parallel interface ICs, RAM, ROM and other support chips. A significant design feature was that the M6800 family of ICs required only a single five-volt power supply at a time when most other microprocessors required three voltages. The M6800 Microcomputer System was announced in March 1974 and was in full production by the end of that year.
Tiny BASIC is a family of dialects of the BASIC programming language that can fit into 4 or fewer KBs of memory. Tiny BASIC was designed by Dennis Allison and the People's Computer Company (PCC) in response to the open letter published by Bill Gates complaining about users pirating Altair BASIC, which sold for $150. Tiny BASIC was intended to be a completely free version of BASIC that would run on the same early microcomputers.
Li-Chen Wang is an American computer engineer, best known for his Palo Alto Tiny BASIC for Intel 8080-based microcomputers. He was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club and made significant contributions to the software for early microcomputer systems from Tandy Corporation and Cromemco. He made early use of the word copyleft, in Palo Alto Tiny BASIC's distribution notice "@COPYLEFT ALL WRONGS RESERVED" in June 1976.
The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist group in Menlo Park, California, which met from March 1975 to December 1986. The club had an influential role in the development of the microcomputer revolution and the rise of that aspect of the Silicon Valley information technology industrial complex.
The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics and was sold by mail order through advertisements there, in Radio-Electronics, and in other hobbyist magazines. According to Harry Garland, the Altair 8800 was the product that catalyzed the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. It was the first commercially successful personal computer. The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a de facto standard in the form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC.
The S-100 bus or Altair bus, IEEE 696-1983(inactive-withdrawn), is an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800. The S-100 bus was the first industry standard expansion bus for the microcomputer industry. S-100 computers, consisting of processor and peripheral cards, were produced by a number of manufacturers. The S-100 bus formed the basis for homebrew computers whose builders implemented drivers for CP/M and MP/M. These S-100 microcomputers ran the gamut from hobbyist toy to small business workstation and were common in early home computers until the advent of the IBM PC.
The Kansas City standard (KCS), or Byte standard, is a data storage protocol for standard cassette tapes or other audio recording media at 300 bits per second. It originated in a symposium sponsored by Byte magazine in November 1975 in Kansas City, Missouri to develop a standard for the storage of digital microcomputer data on inexpensive consumer quality cassettes. The first systems based on the standard appeared in 1976.
Southwest Technical Products Corporation, or SWTPC, was an American producer of electronic kits, and later complete computer systems. It was incorporated in 1967 in San Antonio, Texas, succeeding the Daniel E. Meyer Company. In 1990, SWTPC became Point Systems, before ceasing a few years later.
Popular Electronics was an American magazine published by John August Media, LLC, and hosted at TechnicaCuriosa.com. The magazine was started by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company in October 1954 for electronics hobbyists and experimenters. It soon became the "World's Largest-Selling Electronics Magazine". In April 1957, Ziff-Davis reported an average net paid circulation of 240,151 copies. Popular Electronics was published until October 1982 when, in November 1982, Ziff-Davis launched a successor magazine, Computers & Electronics. During its last year of publication by Ziff-Davis, Popular Electronics reported an average monthly circulation of 409,344 copies. The title was sold to Gernsback Publications, and their Hands-On Electronics magazine was renamed to Popular Electronics in February 1989, and published until December 1999. The Popular Electronics trademark was then acquired by John August Media, who revived the magazine, the digital edition of which is hosted at TechnicaCuriosa.com, along with sister titles, Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Astronomy.
Processor Technology Corporation was a personal computer company founded in April 1975, by Gary Ingram and Bob Marsh in Berkeley, California. Their first product was a 4K byte RAM board that was compatible with the MITS Altair 8800 computer but more reliable than the MITS board. This was followed by a series of memory and I/O boards including a video display module.
The Cromemco Octart was an expansion card made by Cromemco for their range of S-100 bus based computer systems. The card provided eight serial bus channels and a single bi-directional parallel port. The serial connections were often used to interface eight computer terminals to the host system. In combination with the Cromemco Cromix multi-user operating system, this allowed different users to concurrently work on the system. The parallel port was typically connected to an IEEE 1284-type printer.
Z-2 is a series of microcomputers made by Cromemco, Inc. which were introduced to the market in the middle to late 1970s. They were S-100 bus machines powered by the Zilog Z80 processor and typically ran on the CP/M operating system.
ColorGraphics Weather Systems was a computer graphics company that pioneered the use of computer graphics for displaying weather forecasts on local television. Formed in 1979 by Terry Kelly and Richard Daly, it is now part of Weather Central, another of Kelly's companies.
The Cromemco Dazzler was a graphics card for S-100 bus computers introduced in a Popular Electronics cover story in 1976. It was the first color graphics card available for microcomputers. The Dazzler was the first of a succession of increasingly capable graphics products from Cromemco which, by 1984, were in use at 80% of all television stations in the U.S. for the display of weather, news, and sports graphics.
Roger Douglas Melen (1946--2024) was an electrical engineer recognized for his early contributions to the microcomputer industry, and for his technical innovations.
Harry T. Garland is a scientist, engineer, author, and entrepreneur who co-founded Cromemco Inc., one of the earliest and most successful microcomputer companies. He received the B.A. degree in mathematics from Kalamazoo College, and the Ph.D. degree in biophysics from Stanford University. Dr. Garland has been recognized as one of the most important innovators in the development of personal computers in Silicon Valley.
The Cromemco Cyclops, introduced in 1975 by Cromemco, was the first commercial all-digital camera using a digital metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) image sensor. It was also the first digital camera to be interfaced to a microcomputer. The digital sensor for the camera was a modified 1kb dynamic RAM (DRAM) memory chip that offered a resolution of 32 × 32 pixels (0.001 megapixels).
Cromemco DOS or CDOS is a CP/M-like operating system by Cromemco designed to allow users of Cromemco microcomputer systems to create and manipulate disk files using symbolic names.
The Bytesaver, introduced by Cromemco in 1976, was the first programmable memory board for the MITS Altair and S-100 bus microcomputer systems. The Bytesaver had sockets for 8 UV-erasable EPROMs providing up to 8 Kbytes of storage. The EPROMs could be programmed by the Bytesaver, or read as computer memory. In the history of microcomputer systems, the Bytesaver was the first viable alternative to the use of punched paper tape for storing programs, and has been called “a great advance in microcomputer technology”.
The Dimension 68000 is a microcomputer introduced by the Micro Craft Corporation in 1983 that sought to emulate the Apple II, the IBM PC, and various CP/M-centric computers through a family of coprocessor expansion cards and emulation software. The Dimension 68000 can also run as a standalone computer based on the Motorola 68000 from which it gets its namesake. The computer is mostly the brainchild of Mike Carpenter, a former executive of a scientific instrument manufacturer who incorporated Micro Craft in Dallas, Texas, to develop the Dimension 68000. It had a market lifespan of three years and received mixed, mostly positive, reception from the technology press. Criticism was leveled at the $6,250 price tag for the computer with the full deck of coprocessor cards, as well as the extent of the emulation power of those cards.
References
↑ Ketchum, Jr., Bradford W. (December 1981). "The INC. Private 100". Inc. 3 (12): 35–44.
↑ Walker, Terry; Garland, Harry; Melen, Roger (1975). "Build Cyclops". Popular Electronics. Vol.7, no.2. pp.27–31.
↑ Levy, Steven (1984). Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday. p.202. ISBN0-385-19195-2.
↑ Veit, Stan (1993). "Cromemco: Innovation and Reliability". Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer. Asheville, North Carolina: WorldComm. pp.104–105. ISBN1-56664-023-7. The Bytesaver proved to be a very popular peripheral for the Altair and IMSAI computers.
↑ Walker, Terry; Melen, Roger; Garland, Harry; Hall, Ed (1976). "Build the TV Dazzler". Popular Electronics. Vol.9, no.2. pp.31–40.
↑ Veit, Stan (1993). "Cromemco: Innovation and Reliability". Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer. Asheville, North Carolina: WorldComm. p.107. ISBN1-56664-023-7. The D+7A analog interface board was one of the most important peripherals that Cromemco ever made, because it provided a gateway into the word of scientific and industrial computing.
1 2 Veit, Stan (1993). "Cromemco: Innovation and Reliability". Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer. Asheville, North Carolina: WorldComm. p.106. ISBN1-56664-023-7. Their products were noted for both innovative design and quality construction.
↑ Parkinson, Roger; Johnson, Jeff (December 10, 1998). "A Partial History of CROMEMCO". Stanford University InfoLab. Stanford University. Retrieved 1 November 2017.
↑ "Computer Systems - Cromemco". Computer Buyer's Guide and Handbook (13). Computer Information Publishing Inc.: 49 1983. ISSN0738-9213. This company has sold more S-100 systems than any other
↑ McCrate, Joe (July–August 1981). "Major New Enhancements to CROMIX". I/O News. 1 (6): 9–12. ISSN0274-9998.
↑ Terwilliger, Curt (November–December 1980). "A New Approach to System Design: The C-Bus, IOP, and QUADART". I/O News. 1 (2): 1, 22–25. ISSN0274-9998.
1 2 Ritch, Emma (July 25, 2008). "REgrid's McCalmont comes full circle as solar stalwart". Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. 26 (12). Business Journal Publications, Inc.: 16–17. "He was one of several students plucked out of a class taught by professor Harry Garland to join startup microcomputer company Cromemco
↑ Creagan, Danny J. (1983). Computer Assisted Instruction in Basic. Air Force Institute of Technology. The Air Force recently approved the purchase of 1500 Cromemco microcomputers.
↑ Arnoild, R.J.; Knight, J.B. (1992). Weapon Delivery Analysis and Ballistic Flight Testing(PDF). North Atlantic Treaty Organization. p.62. ISBN92-835-0677-4. Archived(PDF) from the original on December 8, 2021. The MSS Weapon Delivery Module (WDM) effort was subsequently initiated... The hardware platform was a Cromemco/UNIX system.
↑ "Cromemco C-10". National Museum of American History. Retrieved 24 October 2021. Cromemco systems were the first commercially marketed microcomputer certified by the U.S. Navy for use aboard ships and Ohio class submarines
↑ Sterne, D.F. "Tactical Speech Synthesis"(PDF). Defence Technical Information Center. pp.64–66. Archived(PDF) from the original on February 11, 2017. Retrieved 18 July 2018.
↑ Breeding, Gary (January–February 1984). "Cromemco Systems Network Transactions at Chaotic Exchange". I/O News. 3 (6): 20. ISSN0274-9998.
↑ Ost, Laura (November 9, 1979). "Cromemco Saw the Future for Computers Overseas". The Peninsula Times Tribune: E1, E3.
↑ Williams, Dennis A.; Lubenow, Gerald C.; Findlay-Brown, Ian (February 18, 1985). "China Looks West to Learn". Newsweek: 84.
↑ "Painted Sky". UNIX Review. 4. Review Publications Company: 75. April 1986. Retrieved 2021-12-03. Cromemco, Inc., whose hardware is used to produce news and weather graphics for more than 80 percent of the major-market television stations in the US, and ColorGraphics Systems, Inc. have reached a joint marketing agreement...
↑ Carter, James. "Cromemco System I in Ghostbusters (1984)". Starring the Computer – Computers in Movies and Television. www.starringthecomputer.com. Retrieved 2 November 2014.
↑ Carter, James. "Cromemco System Three". Starring the Computer – Computers in Movies and Television. www.starringthecomputer.com. Retrieved 2 November 2017.
↑ Ebert, Roger (18 July 2013). "Computer Chess". Retrieved 2 November 2017.
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