The Zapple Monitor was a firmware-based product developed by Roger Amidon (Bio (pdf)) at Technical Design Laboratories (also known as TDL). TDL was based in Princeton, New Jersey, USA in the 1970s and early 1980s. In computing, firmware is software that is embedded in a hardware device. ...

The Zapple monitor supplied basic input/output services (BIOS) for S-100-based Z-80 computer systems such as the classic Altair and IMSAI S-100 systems. BIOS, in computing, stands for Basic Input/Output System also incorrectly known as Basic Integrated Operating System. ... The S-100 bus was an early computer bus designed 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 and peripheral cards, were produced... The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Zilog from 1976 onwards. ... Altair 8800 The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975, based on the Intel 8080A CPU. Sold as a kit through Popular Electronics magazine, the designers intended to sell only a few hundred to hobbyists, and were surprised when they sold over ten times that many in the... The IMSAI 8080 microcomputer, manufactured by IMS Associates, Inc. ...

Pre-dating floppy interfaces and other more familiar mass-storage devices for personal computers, the Zapple multifunction card hosting the firmware monitor included an RS-232 serial interface along with a cassette tape based hardware interface seemingly optimized for a particular portable Sanyo tape deck that many S-100 aficionados at the time held to be the standard of reliability. The word monitor is a Latin term for warner or suggester. ... 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). ... Serial is a term, originating in literature, for a format by which a story is told in contiguous installments in sequential issues of a single periodical publication. ... A standard audio cassette Cassette may refer to: A small cartridge of some form. ... Look up Tape in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Old logo New logo SANYO Electric Co. ...