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.
The Commodore PET is a line of home/personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A top-seller in the Canadian and United States educational markets, it was the first personal computer sold to the public and formed the basis for their entire 8-bit product line, including the Commodore 64. The first model, which was named the PET 2001, was presented to the public at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in 1977.
The KIM-1, short for Keyboard Input Monitor, is a small 6502-based single-board computer developed and produced by MOS Technology, Inc. and launched in 1976. It was very successful in that period, due to its low price and easy-access expandability.
The Open Letter to Hobbyists was a 1976 open letter written by Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, to early personal computer hobbyists, in which Gates expresses dismay at the rampant software piracy taking place in the hobbyist community, particularly with regard to his company's software.
The Commodore 1530 (C2N) Datasette, later also Datassette is Commodore's dedicated magnetic tape data storage device. Using compact cassettes as the storage medium, it provided inexpensive storage to Commodore's 8-bit home/personal computers, notably the PET, VIC-20, and C64. A physically similar model, Commodore 1531, was made for the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 series computers.
The IMSAI 8080 was an early microcomputer released in late 1975, based on the Intel 8080 and later 8085 and S-100 bus. It was a clone of its main competitor, the earlier MITS Altair 8800. The IMSAI is largely regarded as the first "clone" microcomputer. The IMSAI machine ran a highly modified version of the CP/M operating system called IMDOS. It was developed, manufactured and sold by IMS Associates, Inc.. In total, between 17,000 and 20,000 units were produced from 1975 to 1978.
Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) was an American electronics company founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico that began manufacturing electronic calculators in 1971 and personal computers in 1975.
Pertec Computer Corporation (PCC), formerly Peripheral Equipment Corporation (PEC), was a computer company based in Chatsworth, California which originally designed and manufactured peripherals such as floppy drives, tape drives, instrumentation control and other hardware for computers.
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 TV Typewriter was a video terminal that could display two pages of 16 lines of 32 upper case characters on a standard television set. The Don Lancaster design appeared on the cover of Radio-Electronics magazine in September 1973. The magazine included a 6-page description of the design but readers could send off for a 16-page package of construction details. Radio-Electronics sold thousands of copies for $2.00 each. The TV Typewriter is considered a milestone in the home computer revolution along with the Mark-8 and Altair 8800 computers.
The Sol-20 was the first fully assembled microcomputer with a built-in keyboard and television output, what would later be known as a home computer. The design was a combination of an Intel 8080-based backplane, a VDM-1 graphics card, the 3P+S I/O card to drive a keyboard, and circuitry to connect to a cassette deck for program storage. Additional expansion was available via five S-100 bus slots at the back of the machine. It also included swappable ROMs with boot code that allowed it to start up running a selection of programs.
The Dick Smith Super-80 was a Zilog Z80 based kit computer developed as a joint venture between Electronics Australia magazine and Dick Smith Electronics. It was presented as a series of construction articles in Electronics Australia magazine's August, September and October 1981 issues.
Heathkit's H8 is an Intel 8080-based microcomputer sold in kit form starting in 1977. The H8 was similar to the S-100 bus computers of the era, and like those machines was often used with the CP/M operating system on floppy disk. The main difference between the H8 and S-100 machines was the bus; the H8 used a 50-pin bus design that was smaller, more robust and better engineered electrically. The machine also included a bootstrap ROM that made it easier to start up, including code for running basic input/output and allowing input through a front-mounted octal keypad and front panel display instead of the binary switches and lights used on machines like the Altair 8800. The H8 was a successful design but required a separate terminal to be truly useful; Heathkit introduced several terminals as well. A successor model, the "All-in-One" Heathkit H89, combined a Z-80 processor board and a floppy disk drive into the cabinet of an Heathkit H19 terminal. This model also was sold in fully assembled form as the WH89. These were later sold by Zenith Electronics with their name on the front as the Zenith Z-89.
Cromemco's Dazzler was a graphics card for S-100 bus computers. Released in 1976, it is the first commercial color bit-mapped graphics card available for microcomputers. Multiple Dazzler cards could be installed in a single machine and synced together, a feature which could, with minor modification, be used to genlock. Genlocked Dazzler cards drove ColorGraphics Weather Systems displays that generated most of the weather imagery seen on US television in the early 1980s.
Altair BASIC is a discontinued interpreter for the BASIC programming language that ran on the MITS Altair 8800 and subsequent S-100 bus computers. It was Microsoft's first product, distributed by MITS under a contract. Altair BASIC was the start of the Microsoft BASIC product range.
On the original IBM Personal Computer, and the IBM PCjr, an interface was provided to allow the use of a compact cassette tape recorder to load and save data and programs. In fact until the PC was discontinued in 1987, there was a Model 104 offered that was a 5150 from IBM without a floppy disk drive.
PolyMorphic Systems was a manufacturer of microcomputer boards and systems based on the S-100 bus. Their products included the Poly-88 and the System 8813. The company was incorporated in California in 1976 as Interactive Products Corporation d/b/a PolyMorphic Systems. It was initially based in Goleta, then Santa Barbara, California.
