Cromemco was a Mountain View, California microcomputer company that began as a partnership in 1974 between Harry Garland and Roger Melen, two Stanford PhD students. The name comes from their residence at Stanford University, Cro(thers) Mem(orial) (Stanford Dormitory). The company was incorporated in 1976. For other places in California called “Mountain View”, see Mountain View, California (disambiguation). ... 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (the link is to a full 1974 calendar). ... Stanford redirects here. ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ...

Their initial products used the Zilog Z80 microprocessor and the S-100 bus. The Z-1, released in August 1976, was a Z-80 development system on a heavy-duty IMSAI 8080 22-slot chassis . It included a 8 kB (kiB) static RAM, RS-232 serial port, a PROM programmer and sold for $2495. Its modular design supported a 4 MHz Z-80 plug-in card ($395) and 4 kB static RAM cards ($295). The 1978 Z-2 line was an updated S-100 computer sold as modules or a complete system. The Z-2 was available with one 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and no RAM for $1995 or as the complete System Two (CS-2) with 64 kB RAM and two floppy drives for $3990. The Z-2 was the first commercially marketed microcomputer certified by the U.S. Navy for use aboard ships without major modification and some were used aboard Ohio class submarines for data logging during tests. The System Three (CS-3) was the "professional" version of the System Two with two 8 inch floppy drives standard instead of 5 1/4 inch drives, and 32 kB RAM for $5990. ZiLOG, often seen as Zilog, is a manufacturer of 8-bit CPUs, and is most famous for its Intel 8080-compatible Z80 series. ... The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Zilog from 1976 onwards. ... The S-100 bus, IEEE696-1983 (withdrawn), was an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800, generally considered today to be the first personal computer. The S-100 bus was the first industry standard bus for the microcomputer industry, and S-100 computers, processor... The IMSAI 8080 microcomputer, manufactured by IMS Associates, Inc. ... According to the International Electrotechnical Commission a kibibyte (a contraction of kilo binary byte) is a unit of information or computer storage. ... Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) is a type of semiconductor memory. ... RS-232 (also referred to as EIA RS-232C or V.24) is a standard for serial binary data interchange between a DTE (Data terminal equipment) and a DCE (Data communication equipment). ... In the United States, a prom, short for promenade, is a formal dance held at the end of the of the high school academic year. ... The United States has 18 Ohio class submarines: 14 nuclear-powered SSBNs, each armed with 24 Trident II SLBMs; they are also known as Trident submarines, and provide the sea-based leg of the triad of the United States strategic deterrent forces 4 nuclear-powered SSGNs, each armed with 154...

The System Two and System Three were sold to educational establismments across Europe and China. These sales helped the company to fund the transition to 16-bit systems with Motorola MC68000 processors during 1981. The System 1 followed the System Two and System Three. It contained either dual 5 1/4 inch floppy drives, or one floppy and a 5 MB hard disk, and was available with a dual processor "DPU" card which contained both Z-80 and MC 68000 processors. A ruggedized version of the MC68000 computer with removable hard disk cartridges was widely deployed by the USAF as part of the USAF Mission Support System (MSS) for F-16, F-15 and other aircraft. The MSS provided pilots key navigational and other data during missions and enabled combat pilots to compare mission effectiveness to flight plan data during the subsequent debriefing by their superiors. In computer science, 16-bit is an adjective used to describe integers that are at most two bytes wide, or to describe CPU architectures based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. ... Motorola (NYSE: MOT) is an international communications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. ... The Motorola 68000 is a CISC microprocessor, the first member of a successful family of microprocessors from Motorola, which were all mostly software compatible. ... The F-16 Fighting Falcon is a modern multi-role jet fighter aircraft built in the United States and used by dozens of countries all over the world. ... The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is an all-weather, extremely maneuverable, tactical fighter designed to permit the U.S. Air Force to gain and maintain air superiority in aerial combat. ...

The C-10 personal computer was introduced in June, 1982. It was a 4 MHz Z80 system featuring 64 kiB RAM with an 80 character x 25 line video screen for US$1785. A megahertz (MHz) is one million (106) hertz, a measure of frequency. ... According to the International Electrotechnical Commission a kibibyte (a contraction of kilo binary byte) is a unit of information or computer storage. ... Sharma Ram (disambiguation) Ram Sharma is an amazing, talented teenager that lives in Canada His talents include rapping, comedy, and cooking He is bound to success! ...

Cromemco produced the graphical microcomputers used by many television stations for weather forecasts during the mid to late 1980s. These Colorgraphics Systems were used on the evening news programs to replace the transparent plexiglass maps on which local weathermen formerly drew weather symbols by hand. The computers used an enhanced version of Cromemco's popular Dazzler color graphics card. Structure of PMMA: (C5O2H8)n Structure of methyl methacrylate Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) or polymethyl-2-methylpropanoate is the synthetic polymer of methyl methacrylate. ...

The Z80 based systems ran either CDOS (Cromemco Disk Operating System) or CP/M. CP/M is an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/85 and Zilog Z80 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. ...

Multi-user capability, via their own Cromix operating system based on Unix, was offered from 1979 onwards. Cromix was witten in the C programming language to run on an 8 bit Z-80 processor. It included many of the properties of the Unix operating system which typically requred a sixteen bit processor with a hardware memory mappter (that the Z-80 did not provide). The Z-80 processor was able to utilize up to 16 banks of 64 MB of RAM to support 1 MB multi user and multitasking applications. It was possible to run this efficient operating system using only a floppy disk drive (no hard disk) and that distinguished it from other operating systems of the time based on Unix which required large expensive hard drives. Roy Harrington was the lead designer of the Cromix development team. Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... The C Programming Language, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the original edition that served for many years as an informal specification of the language The C programming language (often, just C) is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative computer programming language developed in the early 1970s by Dennis Ritchie for use...

The company employed, at its peak in 1983, more than 500 people and had annual revenues of US$55 million. It was wholly owned by Garland and Melen until it was sold to Dynatech in 1987 as a supplier to their subsidiary Colorgraphics Weather Systems. The European division of Cromemco reorganized as Cromemco AG and is still in business. 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• Stanford Cromemco history page
• Cromemco company timeline
• Cromemco Z-1 brochure 1976
• The compact System 0 six-slot S-100 computer
• Cromemco System 1 Motorola 68000, picture and specs, 1982
• Another view of the System 1
• Cromemco C10 personal computer photograph, specs, and advertisement, 1982
• Cromemco C-10SP review from Creative Computing magazine, January 1984
• Cromemco CS-100 and CS-300 computers c. 1984–85
• Dave's Old Computers, pictures, disk images and manuals