Cromemco

Cromemco was a US-based company with headquarters in Mountain View, California in the wake of the availability of low-cost microprocessors to the first wave of companies (along with Apple, Commodore, Apollo and others) was that microcomputers or personal computers made ​​popular.

It was founded in 1971 by Roger Melen and Harry Garland, two students at Stanford University founded and named after their dormitory " Crothers Memorial Hall Dormitory " CRO MEMCO. In 1983 Cromemco had about 500 employees and annual sales of $ 55 million.

Cromemco initially became known with the production of a plug for the S -100 bus ( for the Altair 8800 ), which allows an output on normal TV, the TV Dazzler, with a resolution of 128 * 128 pixels and 500 bytes of memory.

The most famous Cromemco computer was the C3, a multi-user system on Zilog Z80 - based with 64 kB RAM, one to four floppy drives and connections for Cromemco and Zenith terminals. Other models were Cromemco I to II ( Intel 8080 ), the Cromemco PC ( with Motorola 68000 ), and the Z2D ( with a CP / M derivative).

Cromemco has in the microcomputer area the first Fortran compiler, the first hard drive and the first Unix ( Cromix ) offered.

The company was sold to Dynatech 1987. The Europe division was reorganized as Cromemco AG, and exists to this day.