The Newbear 77-68 was a first generation home computer that was based around the Motorola 6800 microprocessor. It was developed by Tim Moore and sold by Bear Microcomputer Systems. It was designed as a low-cost microprocessor system that could be built up part by part into a complete system, depending on how much the owner wanted to spend on the system.

The basic system consisted of a CPU board and a control panel, which cost around £50. The basic 77-68 was comprised of an 8-inch square printed circuit board accommodating the microprocessor, Static RAM of 256 8 bit words and the bare essentials in terms of input/output and timing logic to make a working computer. The processor ran with an instruction cycle time of around 1.25 microseconds with most instructions executing in 3 to 7 microseconds.

Other boards that were available to upgrade the system included a 4K ROM board and VDU driver.

This example in our collection is built into a Newbear-branded case and has a number of boards, including the CPU board, a ROM monitor board, a 32K Dynaram board, two unknown boards, one of which is handmade, and a power supply.

Manufacturer: Bear Microcomputer Systems
Date: 1977

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH72161. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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