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The U.S. company SWTPC started in 1964 as DEMCO (Daniel E. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Year 1964 ( MCMLXIV) was a Leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar of the 1964 Gregorian calendar. Meyer Company). It was incorporated in 1967 as Southwest Technical Products Corporation of San Antonio, Texas.

In the 1960s, many hobbyist electronics magazines such as Popular Electronics and Radio Electronics published construction articles, for many of which the author would arrange for a company to assemble a kit of parts to build the project. Popular Electronics was a magazine started by Ziff-Davis Publishing in October 1954 for hobbyist and experimenters in electronics Radio-Electronics magazine was published under various titles from 1929 to 2002 Daniel Meyer published several popular projects and successfully sold his kits. Daniel Meyer (February 6 1932 &ndash May 16 1998 was the founder and president Southwest Technical Products Corporation. He soon started selling kits for other authors such as Don Lancaster and Louis Garner. Donald E Lancaster is a prolific Author, inventor and microcomputer pioneer best known for his magazine columns Between 1967 and 1971 SWTPC sold kits for over 50 Popular Electronics articles. Most of these kits were intended for audio use, such as hi-fi, utility amplifiers, and test equipment. High fidelity or hi-fi reproduction is a term used by home stereo listeners and home audio enthusiasts ( Audiophiles to refer to high-quality reproduction Generally an amplifier or simply amp, is any device that changes usually increases the amplitude of a signal.

In 1972 SWTPC had a large enough collection of kits to justify printing a 32 page catalog. In January 1975 SWTPC introduced a computer terminal kit, the "TV Typewriter", or CT-1024. The TV Typewriter was a video terminal that could display 2 pages of 16 lines of 32 upper case characters on a standard television By November of 1975 they were delivering complete computer kits based on Motorola MPUs. They were very successful for the next 5 or so years and grew to over 100 people. Most of the companies that were selling a computer kit in 1975 were out of business by 1978. Around 1987, SWTPC moved to point of sale computer systems. Point of sale or point of service ( POS or PoS) can mean a retail shop, a checkout counter in a shop or the location where a transaction The original company was terminated about 1990 and became Point Systems. This new company lasted only a few years.

Microcomputer pioneers

When microprocessors (CPU chips) became available, SWTPC became one of the first suppliers of microcomputers to the general public, focusing on designs using the Motorola 6800 and, later, the 6809 CPUs. A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a Central processing unit (CPU on a single Integrated Microchipsjpg|right|thumb|200px|Microchips ( EPROM memory with a transparent window showing the integrated circuit inside microcomputer is a Computer with a Microprocessor as its Central processing unit. The 6800 is an 8-bit Microprocessor produced by Motorola and released shortly after the Intel 8080 in late 1974 The Motorola 6809 is an 8-bit (arguably an 8/ 16-bit) Microprocessor CPU from Motorola, introduced circa 1979 Many of these products were available in kit form as well. SWTPC also designed and supplied computer terminals, chassis, processor cards, memory cards, motherboards, I/O cards, disk drive systems, and tape storage systems. From the older "TV Typewriter" design a Video terminal had evolved the CT-64 terminal system, which was an essential part of many early SWTPC systems. Later a more intelligent version of this terminal, the CT-82, was introduced, and a graphical terminal the GT-6144 Graphics Terminal. Still later a SS-50 bus plug-in board, the "Data Systems 68 6845 Video Display Board" was introduced, and a keyboard could be connected to this board. Motorola 6845 (commonly MC6845) is a video address generator first introduced by Motorola and used in the MDA, CGA and EGA video adapters A Video Display Controller or VDC is an Integrated circuit which is the main component in a Video signal generator, a device responsible for the production With this solution an external terminal was no longer needed.

SWTPC's SS-50 backplane bus was supported by several other manufacturers: (Midwest Scientific Inc, Smoke Signal Broadcasting, Gimix, Helix, Tano, Percom Data), etc, It was extended to the SS-64 (for the 68000 CPU) by Helix. The SS-50 bus was an early Computer bus designed as a part of the SWTPC 6800 Computer System that used the Motorola 6800 CPU A backplane (or "backplane system" is a circuit board (usually a Printed circuit board) that connects several connectors in parallel to each other so In Computer architecture, a bus is a subsystem that transfers data between computer components inside a Computer or between computers SWTPC also designed one of the first affordable printers available for microcomputer users; it was based on a receipt printer mechanism.

Technical Systems Consultants, first of West Lafayette, Indiana (ex Purdue University) and later of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was the foremost supplier of software for SWTPC compatible hardware. Technical Systems Consultants was a US software company that was instrumental in the first wave of the personal computer revolution Their software included operating systems (Flex, mini-FLEX, FLEX09, and UniFLEX) and various languages (several BASIC variants, FORTRAN, Pascal, C, assemblers, etc) and other applications. The FLEX single-tasking Operating system was developed by Technical Systems Consultants (TSC of West Lafayette, Indiana Other software, from third parties, included Introl's C compiler, Omegasoft's Pascal compiler, the Lucidata Pascal system (from Cambridge, UK), and assorted spread sheets and text processors. tags please moot on the talk page first! --> In Computing, C is a general-purpose cross-platform block structured A compiler is a Computer program (or set of programs that translates text written in a computer language (the source language) into another Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural Programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small By about 1980, TSC had developed a Unix-like multi-user, multi-programming operating system (UniFLEX), for 6809 systems with DMA 8" floppy disks and extended memory. Several of TSC's languages were ported to the uniFlex, as was the Lucidata Pascal system.

SWTPC was a pioneer of open source software. Open source is a development methodology which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge Their software catalog included the TSC software, and software from many other sources (including SWTPC itself). Much of it was available in source code -- for a higher cost.

Product gallery

Click the images to enlarge.

Universal Strobe (1968)

Stereo preamplifier (1969)

Digital Measurements Lab, Frequency Counter Module (1970)

Function Generator (1973)

CT-1024 Terminal with monitor (January 1975)

CT-1024 Terminal System (January 1975)

SWTPC 6800 microcomputer system (November 1975)

SWTPC 6800 microcomputer system (November 1975)

SWTPC 6800 microcomputer system (November 1975)

SWTPC AC-30 Cassette Interface (July 1976)

External links

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