The APF Microcomputer System is a second generation 8-bit cartridge-based home video game console released in October 1978 by APF Electronics Inc. with six cartridges.APF Microcomputer System The console is often referred to M-1000 or MP-1000, which are the two model numbers of the console. The APF-MP1000 comes built-in with the game Rocket Patrol.
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Dialog was a microcomputer system developed by Gorenje in 1980s. It was based on the 8-bit 4 MHz Zilog Z-80A microprocessor. The primary operating system was FEDOS (CP/M 2.2 compatible), developed by Computer Structures and Systems Laboratory (Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana) and Gorenje. There were 3 variants of the Dialog microcomputer system, distinguished only by minor changed: home, laboratory and personal (PC) (in Slovene: hišni, laboratorijski, osebni).
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The 6800 ("sixty-eight hundred") 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. "Motorola's M6800 microcomputer system, which can operate from a single 5-volt supply, is moving out of the sampling stage and into full production." The small-quantity price of the MC6800 is $360. The MC6820 PIA cost $28. The 6800 has a 16-bit address bus that can directly access 64 KB of memory and an 8-bit bi-directional data bus.
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TRS-80 is the name of Tandy Corporation's original 1977 microcomputer system (also known as the Model I). The TRS-80 brand was also later applied to many different computers sold by Tandy, including several unrelated in design to the Model I.
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MIL also produced a series of early microcomputers using this chip, including the MIL CPS-1, which may be the earliest example of a microcomputer system that was shipped in completed form, as opposed to a kit that had to be assembled. Several other upgraded models followed.
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CPU had financed the development of a SC/MP based microcomputer system using the income from its design-and-build consultancy. This system was launched in January 1979 as the first product of Acorn Computer Ltd., a trading name used by CPU to keep the risks of the two different lines of business separate. The microcomputer kit was named as Acorn System 75.
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The theme music to the programme was Kraftwerk's Computer World, taken from their 1981 album of the same name. The opening titles was an animation of an owl – the mascot (and logo) of the BBC Microcomputer system – flying into a domestic living room. The "owl" theme would be used on the two successor shows. The ending was Computer World 2, taken from the same album.
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In April 1984, Acorn won the Queen's Award for Technology for the BBC Micro. The award paid special tribute to the BBC Micro's advanced design, and it commended Acorn "for the development of a microcomputer system with many innovative features". Principal creators of the BBC micro in 2008, some 26 years after its release In April 1982, Sinclair launched the ZX Spectrum. Curry conceived of the Electron as Acorn's sub-£200 competitor.
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InfoWorld in 1981 called the Model II "a well-designed, capable business system" that "overcomes several limitations of the Model I". Creative Computing in 1984 called it a "state-of-the-art business machine" that "might have taken the business market by storm had it not had a nameplate reading 'Radio Shack.'" BYTE in August 1984 described the TRS-80 16B as "a usable multiuser microcomputer system", but with a slow hard drive that might limit the computer to two users.
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Acorn was chosen because the microcomputer system was to be expandable and growth-oriented. It also had the attraction of appearing before "Apple Computer" in a telephone directory. March 1979 price list Around this time, CPU and Andy Hopper set up Orbis Ltd. to commercialise the Cambridge Ring networking system Hopper had worked on for his PhD, but it was soon decided to bring him into CPU as a director because he could promote CPU's interests at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.
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A P8000 running WEGA 3.1 The P8000 is a microcomputer system developed in 1987 by the VEB Elektro-Apparate-Werke Berlin-Treptow „Friedrich Ebert“ (EAW) in the German Democratic Republic (DDR, East Germany). It consisted of an 8-bit and a 16-bit microprocessor and a Winchester disk controller. It was intended as a universal programming and development system for multi-user/multi-task applications. The initial list price of the P8000 was 172,125 East German marks (around 860,000–1.7 million DM).
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In computing, the Tube was the expansion interface and architecture of the BBC Microcomputer System which allowed the BBC Micro to communicate with a second processor, or coprocessor. Under the Tube architecture, the coprocessor would run the application software for the user, whilst the Micro (acting as a host) provided all I/O functions, such as screen display, keyboard and storage devices management. A coprocessor unit could be coldplugged into any BBC Micro with a disk interface (whose ROM contained the necessary host software) and used immediately.
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The later articles included a variety of peripherals, allowing the computer to interface to a keypad, octal display, paper tape loader, paper tape puncher, printer, keyboard, music player, teleprinter, magnetic tape recorder and alphanumeric display. The articles were collected into a book,EDUC-8 An Educational Microcomputer System For The Home Constructor and College Student, by Jamieson Rowe published by Electronics Australia where additional information was published detailing how to expand the number of I/O ports to 256, adding up to 32KB of additional memory, and using the computer to control various switches.
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Block diagram of a M6800 microcomputer system Motorola did not chronicle the development of the 6800 microprocessor the way that Intel did for their microprocessors. In 2008 the Computer History Museum interviewed four members of the 6800 microprocessor design team. Their recollections can be confirmed and expanded by magazine and journal articles written at the time. The Motorola microprocessor project began in 1971 with a team composed of designer Tom Bennett, engineering director Jeff LaVell, product marketer Link Young and systems designers Mike Wiles, Gene Schriber and Doug Powell.
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An early advertisement for the Motorola's M6800 family microcomputer system The March 7, 1974 issue of Electronics had a two-page story on the Motorola MC6800 microprocessor along with the MC6820 Peripheral Interface Adapter, the MC6850 communications interface adapter, the MCM6810 128 byte RAM and the MCM6830 1024 byte ROM.The article used MC6830 for 128 byte RAM and MC6816 for the 1024 byte ROM. Motorola memory chips used MCM as a prefix. This was followed by an eight-page article in the April 18, 1974 issue, written by the Motorola design team.
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"Marcian E. (Ted) Hoff ", Inventors Hall of Fame, invent.org Development of the silicon-gate design methodology and the actual chip design was done by Federico Faggin,Faggin F., Shima M., Hoff M. E. Jr., Feeney H., Mazor S. The MCS-4 – An LSI Microcomputer System, presented by Faggin at the IEEE 1972 Region Six ConferenceFaggin F., and Hoff M. E. Jr. Standard Parts And Custom Design Merge In A Four-Chip Processor Kit. Electronics Magazine, April 24, 1972 who also led the project during 1970-1971. Inventors Hall of Fame, invent.
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If a pixel has more than one channel, the channels are interleaved when using packed pixel organization. Packed pixel displays were common on early microcomputer system that shared a single main memory for both the central processing unit (CPU) and display driver. In such systems, memory was normally accessed a byte at a time, so by packing the display system could read out several pixels worth of data in a single read operation. Packed pixel is one of two major ways to organize graphics data in memory, the other being planar organization, where each pixel is made of individual bits stored in their own plane.
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Monitors, keyboards and other devices for input and output may be integrated or separate. Computer memory in the form of RAM, and at least one other less volatile, memory storage device are usually combined with the CPU on a system bus in one unit. Other devices that make up a complete microcomputer system include batteries, a power supply unit, a keyboard and various input/output devices used to convey information to and from a human operator (printers, monitors, human interface devices). Microcomputers are designed to serve only one user at a time, although they can often be modified with software or hardware to concurrently serve more than one user.
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Later the machines were only available factory-assembled. The machines were widely respected for their speed, configurability, durability, and reliability. The Z-2 was a Z80–based microcomputer system that was introduced in 1977. The original Z-2 in kit form included a ZPU-K Z80 CPU card, S-100 bus motherboard, all-metal rack-mount chassis and dust case, card socket and card guide; the assembled form included a complete set of sockets and card guides, and a cooling fan. The Z-2 series was capable of supporting up to 21 S-100 boards and could be configured with any of the boards supplied by Cromemco.
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Tandy offered multi-user word processing (Scripsit 16),"Radio Shack release multiuser software", Page 11, April 9, 1984, InfoWorld, "...released two multiuser software packages for its powerful Model 16 microcomputer system....and Scripsit word-processing programs...The Model 16 can accommodate up to six users..." spreadsheet (Multiplan), and a 3GL "database" (Profile 16, later upgraded to filePro 16+), as well as an accounting suite with optional COBOL source for customization. RM-COBOL, BASIC, and C were available for programming, with Unify and Informix offered as relational databases. A kernel modification kit was also available. TRS-Xenix was notable for being a master/slave implementation, with all I/O being performed by the Z80 while all processing was done within the otherwise I/O-free 68000 subsystem.
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Originally referred to as the Gluon, a National Semiconductor 32016 second processor solution was apparently planned for the BBC Micro and for other 8-bit microcomputers, with the BBC Micro version employing the Tube interface and offering a quarter of a megabyte of RAM, whereas the "Universal Gluon" would be connected to a microcomputer acting as a terminal using a serial or parallel interface, offer up to 1 MB of RAM, up to 5 MB of hard disk storage, and either a minimal operating system or Unix. The product that was eventually delivered is a sophisticated second processor expansion sometimes branded as "Acorn Cambridge Co-Processor" with an Acorn logo, and sometimes as "BBC Microcomputer System 32016 Second Processor" along with the BBC Micro's owl logo. The device uses the 32016 CPU and 32081 FPU running at 6 MHz. It runs the non-graphical Panos operating system.
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Scripsit's main menu An alternate disk-only version named Superscripsit was available with spellchecking for some platforms, specifically the Model I, Model III, and Model 4.Word Processing And Data Management, Page 52, 14 Dec 1981, New York Magazine, ...Super SCRIPSIT word- processing program ($199, Model III), which rivals the features of $10,000 office word-processing machines. Radio Shack's SCRIPSIT Dictionary ($149) contains the spellings of over 60,000 commonly used words... This version basically matches the functionally of the normal Scripsit for disk-based platforms such as the Model II, Model 12, and Model 16."Radio Shack release multiuser software", Page 11, April 9, 1984, InfoWorld, "...released two multiuser software packages for its powerful Model 16 microcomputer system....and Scripsit word-processing programs...The Model 16 can accommodate up to six users..." Some additional features such as boilerplating and integration with Profile, Tandy's database program for all of their TRS-80 platforms, are available for the disk versions.
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