Microcomputer Choices in The Early Days
Some brochures, sales literature and advertisements from major and minor makers of
micro systems and components. These have been republished in HTML format and are
not intended to be exact reproductions of the original material, but contain the
same basic information. For faster navigation, you may want to use the Table
of Contents page.
- MITS Altair
- The Altair was probably the first microcomputer offered for sale in commercial quantities,
initially as a kit but then as an assembled system. MITS was based in
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
- IMSAI 8080
- IMSAI Associates was based in San Leandro, California and produced the
workhorse of front-panel microcomputers, the I-8080. I owned an I-8080 and
used it for S-100 board development and testing.
- Processor Technology's SOL
- The SOL microcomputer was the major offering of this Emeryville,
California company, although their boards were often used in other's
chassis. I never had a SOL but did use a number of their I/O and video
boards.
- Vector Graphics
- Vector Graphics was based in Westlake Village, California, and produced
one of the early general-purpose S-100 chassis without a front panel. My
first micro used their chassis and CPU.
- Southwest Technical Products (SWTPC)
- SWTPC produced a popular 6800-based microcomputer system and offered a
number of electronic music and other interesting devices.
- Cromemco
- An early proponent of the Zilog Z-80 CPU, this Mountain View, California
company helped develop banked-memory and other technologies, plus systems
used in both laboratories and business offices.
- PolyMorphic Systems
- A slim, 8080-based system called the POLY 88 was the primary product of
this Santa Barbara, California based company.
- Technical Design Labs (TDL)
- TDL was based in Princeton, New Jersey, and focused on developing hardware
and software for Zilog's Z-80 CPU. The also built their own micro system,
called the Xitan.
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