SWTPC
SWTPC (for Southwest Technical Products Corporation) was a designer and manufacturer of electronic products, many available in kit form. Many of these were intended for audio (eg, hi-fi and utility amplifiers).When microcomputers (CPU chips) became available, SWTPC became one of the first suppliers, focusing on the Motorola 6800, and later the 6809, CPUs. Many of these were available in kit form as well. They designed and supplied computer terminals, chassis, processor cards, memory cards, and I/O cards. Their SS-50 bus was supported by several other manufacturers (eg, Smoke Signal Broadcasting, Gimix, Helix, etc) and was even extended to the SS-64 (for the 68000 CPU) by Helix. They even designed one of the first printers available for microcomputer users.
Technical Systems Consultants, first of West Lafayette Indiana (Purdue University) and later of Chapel Hill, North Carolina was the foremost supplier of software (operating systems, applications, etc) for the SWTPC hardware. There were many others.
