Vintage Computer - Micro 68 Microcomputer 'Electronic Product Associates' 6800 microprocessor http://www.microcomputermuseum.com The Micro 68 was first sold in 1976 and an introduction was made in the June 1976 issue of "Radio Electronics" magazine. I purchased the "Micro 68" at the Dayton Hamvention in 1995. A fellow was selling equipment from an old teaching lab at Clark College and I was able to purchase 6 of these - all in very nice condition. Any one needing one for a museum collection contact me and I help you acquire one of these units. This computer is on display at the "Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum" in Floyd Virginia. Subscrib to my channel http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=lcfgroup The Micro 68 is a nice art looking computer with the smoke colored -see through - cover and beautiful finished Walnut wood sides. You can see the components though the cover making it a nice display piece. The computer was manufactured by Electronic Product Assocates in San Diego , California - starting in 1976. This is the same year as the Apple 1 was introduced. This computer could have made a big impact if the designers had worked with Bill Gates and Paul Allen to have a version of Basic running. The computer was very limited in capabilities and expanding the computer was inconvenient. The keyboard has several dual function keys allowing you to load, examine, and execute programs. The best use of the computer was to learn to program the 6800 microprocessor in machine code. A serial interface card was available for $40 and the software to use with an ASR Teletype was available for about $30. The ROM chip is 512 bytes and contains the monitor program allowing you to program and run the computer with the 16 keys on the keyboard. An addition 6 memory sockets are on the PC board for expansion with your own software in EPROM's. The RAM memory with the basic unit is only 128 bytes and with all the chips loaded it had 768 bytes of RAM. This is very limiting allowing only very short programs. You could purchase an external 8K bytes RAM card for $270 and would have been able to run Tiny Basic with this card. The card attached to the external bus shown in this photo. The computer was expandable to 64K bytes of RAM. You would have to build your own expansion card for the 64K of memory. This computer was available the same year as Steve Wozniak's Apple 1. The Apple 1 required power supply transformers,keyboard and display to operate -- this computer would operate out of the box. They did miss the boat - by not offering more-- but no one could see that in 1976. The Apple 1 was a very clever design and the Micro 68 computer was just a standard 6800 with no vision of the future. Steve Wozniak realized the limitations of the Apple 1 and quickly designed the Apple ll microcomputer - a great Plug-&-Play out of the box computer that took the world by storm in 1977 and was the start of today's largest company in the world. Great work Woz and Jobs. I have 6 of these Micro 68 computers and if you are interested in one contact me. A lot more to do in the new museum area so more items to get from the warehouse.

• published: 14 Apr 2014
• views: 158