Cromemco
| Cromemco
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | Incorporated |
| founding | 1971 |
| resolution | 1987 |
| Reason for dissolution | Sale to Dynatech |
| Seat | Mountain View , United States |
| Branch | computer |
| Website | www.cromemco.gr |
Cromemco was an American company headquartered in Mountain View , California , which was part of the first wave of companies (along with Apple , Commodore , Apollo, and others) to popularize microcomputers and PCs as inexpensive microprocessors became available.
It was founded in 1971 by Roger Melen and Harry Garland , two Stanford University students, and named CRO MEMCO after their dormitory "Crothers Memorial Hall Dormitory". In 1983 Cromemco had approximately 500 employees and annual sales of $ 55 million.
Cromemco first became known with the production of a plug-in card for the S-100 bus (for the Altair 8800 ), which allows output to normal televisions, the TV-Dazzler , with a resolution of 128 × 128 pixels and 500 bytes of memory.
The best-known Cromemco computer was the C3, a multi-user system based on the Zilog-Z80 with 64 kB of main memory, one to four floppy drives and connections for Cromemco and Zenith terminals. Other models were Cromemco I to II (with Intel 8080 ), the Cromemco PC (with Motorola 68000 ), and the Z2D (with a CP / M derivative).
Cromemco has the first in the microcomputer area Fortran - compiler , the first disk and the first Unix available (Cromix).
The company was sold to Dynatech in 1987 . The European division was reorganized as Cromemco AG and still exists today.