CROMEMCO was founded by two Stanford students in 1974, Roger Melen and Harry Garland, they lived in the Crothers Memorial hall Dormitory, and used this as the basis of the name for their company.

A university campus was not an ideal place to meet people to advance the business, so in 1976, he company relocated to Mountain view, becoming incorporated in the process.

Initially the company produced cards for the S-100 bus, that were used in the Altair and Imsai machines.

The company produced four systems, the System 0, that ran on a Z80A processor, had 64KB of RAM, and two 390 KB Floppy Drives. The System 1 added a 5MB Hard Disk Drive, if there was a System 2, there is no information on it, but the System 3 had two 8" disk drives, was S-100 bus multiuser, and used the MP/M operating system. It was designed to be built into a desk, or rack mounted.

In 1982, Cromemco also introduced the CS-1H system using a dual processor board Motorola 68000 and Z80.

A sales brochure has the following information.

'The Cromemco System Three is a microcomputer with the features you want and need to do professional work in almost any field; engineering, science, business/accounting, word processing, data-based management, education, medicine, and others.

Not designed as a desktop system, the System Three is a large and heavy chassis intended to be rack-mounted or built into an office desk. The computer has a large 21-slot motherboard to accept a large variety of memory and I/O to suit virtually any application.

The System Three is available in a multi-user system that lets you do the tasks usually associated with much more expensive time-share computers. You can have up to six terminals, a fast printer, a large RAM memory, and more.

The System Three features the Z-80S chip, the flexible S-100 bus, 64K memory as standard, which was expandable to 16MB, 512K dual 8-inch disks, expandable to 23MB with hard disks, and CDOS, Cromemco's disk operating system which was compatible with CP/M.

In the microcomputer field, the Cromemco System Three stands alone in the range of features and capabilities it offers.

This 1979 microcomputer sold for US $5,990 or £3789 +VAT.

Manufacturer: Cromemco
Date: 1979

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH43303. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

Click on the Image(s) For Detail

	Articles