In 1975 SWTPC was one of the original suppliers of microcomputers to the general public, focusing on designs using the Motorola 6800 and later the 6809 CPU.
My build was in kit form in 1976.
SWTPC's SS-50 backplane bus was supported by many manufacturers: Midwest Scientific Inc, Smoke Signal Broadcasting, Gimix, Helix, Tano, Percom Data, Safetran, etc.
I started out using a keyboard and cassette to input data but soon had a 5 1/4 floppy drive system and finally an 8" drive.
I had a copy of Microsoft Basic on cassette along with a few other programs.
There was a monthly magazine dedicated to this computer system that included programs to input
using a keyboard but later they included a floppy.
The store where I bought my kit was mostly dedicated to business computers and software.
I had a choice between two computers, the original Apple Computer and the SWTPC kit.
That Apple Computer was outrageously expensive but I paid about half of its cost for my kit.
This purchase turned out to have an added benefit when it wouldn't boot!
The owner of that store set me down with his technician and we troubleshot it together.
The problem turned out to be a bad trace on the motherboard.
I got to know the owner and would help troubleshoot some of his returned malfunctioning computers including those Apple Computers!
I went through this tread and I can say at one time or another I'd bet I've owned about half of the computer hardware shown!
One of my biggest regrets in life is throwing out so much of the computer hardware that I've owned as I could have started my own museum!
I have owned both an Atari 800 and Amiga 1000 so they both could have been in my museum!
This was my original build with terminal and the monitor upgrade that I later purchased.
This is the SWTPC 6800 Computer System along with the manuals that came with the kit.
Here you can see the power supply, motherboard and some system boards.
My first motherboard.
This is the Motorola 6800 CPU board.
My first floppy disk system.
This is the floppy disk controller.
This is a 4k memory board. I soon had an 8k and then four 16k boards.
I believe the maximum number was four boards for a 64k system.
This is what the CT-64 terminal looked like with the cover off although this is the CT-1024.
As you can see this was also a kit.
This is the original CT-64 terminal when assembled.
I’ve seen advertisements that say the SWTPC 6800 cost $450 and the CT-64 cost $325.
I spotted an abacus or two while looking through this thread and that reminded me that for a few years I bought software and a few other items from an Abacus computer store.