SWTPC

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Image:Swtpclgo.png The U.S. company SWTPC started in 1964 as DEMCO (Daniel E. Meyer Company). It was incorporated in 1967 as Southwest Technical Products Corporation of San Antonio, Texas.

In the 1960s hobbyist electronics magazines such as Popular Electronics would publish construction articles where the author would sell a kit of parts to build the project. Daniel Meyer published several popular projects and was successful at selling the kits. He soon started sell kits for other authors such as Don Lancaster and Louis Garner. Between 1967 and 1971 SWTPC sold kits for over 50 Popular Electronics articles. Most of these kits were intended for audio use, such as hi-fi, utility amplifiers, and test equipment.

In 1972 SWTPC had a large enough collections of kits it could print a 32 page catalog. In January 1975 SWTPC introduced a computer terminal kit. By November of 1975 they were delivering complete computer kits. They were very successful for the next 5 or so years and grew to over 100 people. Most of the companies that were selling a computer kit in 1975 were out of business by 1978. Around 1987 SWTPC moved to point of sale computer systems. The company closed around 1990 and became Point Systems. This new company lasted only a few years.

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Microcomputer pioneers

When microprocessors (CPU chips) became available, SWTPC became one of the first suppliers of microcomputers to the general public, focusing on designs using the Motorola 6800 and, later, the 6809 CPUs. Many of these products were available in kit form as well. SWTPC also designed and supplied computer terminals, chassis, processor cards, memory cards, motherboards, I/O cards, disk drive systems, and tape storage systems.

SWTPC's SS-50 backplane bus was supported by several other manufacturers (Midwest Scientific Inc, Smoke Signal Broadcasting, Gimix, Helix, Tano), and was extended to the SS-64 (for the 6800 CPU) by Helix. They also designed one of the first affordable printers available for microcomputer users (based on a receipt printer type mechanism).

Technical Systems Consultants, first of West Lafayette Indiana (Purdue University) and later of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was the foremost supplier of software for the SWTPC hardware. This included the operating system Flex and various languages (several BASIC variants, FORTRAN, assemblers, etc) and other applications. Other third party software included Introl's C compiler, Omegasoft's Pascal compiler, the Lucidata Pascal system (from Cambridge, UK). By about 1980, TSC had developed a Unix-like multi-user, multi-programming operating system uniFlex, for systems with DMA 8" floppy disks and extended memory. Several of TSC's languages were ported to the uniFlex, as was the Lucidata Pascal system.

SWTPC was a pioneer of open source software. Their software catalog included the TSC software and software from many other sources (including SWTPC itself). Much of it was available in source code -- for a higher cost.

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Product gallery

Click the images to enlarge.

Stereo preamplifier (1969)	CT-1024 Terminal with monitor (January 1975)	CT-1024 Terminal System (January 1975)	SWTPC 6800 microcomputer system (November 1975)
SWTPC 6800 microcomputer system (November 1975)	SWTPC AC-30 Cassette Interface (July 1976)