Our computer is a bore...
Written on July 28th, 2026 by Tech Ads
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Page 1
TERE IS NO QUESTION
Our computer
There is simply no point in trying to
hide it, everyone is going to find out
sooner or later anyway. The Southwest
Technical Products 6800 computer is
a big bore. Discussions with customers
and dealers have confirmed our worse
suspicions.
At first people thought that perhaps
owners of our system were just a bit
shy because they were outnumbered at
local computer club meetings. But then
as the number of owners rose it be-
came clear that this was not the pro-
blem. And it wasn’t that they were un-
sociable or anything like that; they
were simply just bored because they
had nothing to talk about.
Here they were, just sitting there while
all the other members with other
brands of computers exchanged data
on circuit board errors, secret schemes
of adding extra bypass capacitors to
make the thing reliable, tricks to keep
the clock phases from overlapping, cor-
rections to manual errors and other fun
subjects. Can you imagine the frustra-
tion this caused? All our customers
could do was to sit and be bored. They
had nothing to talk about.
Our 6800 has an internal monitor
ROM that automatically puts the boot-
strap loader in memory and refers con-
trol to the terminal, when you power
up. This feature deprives you of the
chance to tell sad stories of how many
Shite,
MPUTER
sam 6800 Svs
is a bore—
times you had to go back and flip the
console switches before you got the
loader program in right. Since you can
do machine language programs direct-
ly from your video terminal or teletype
in hexidecimal form, you will not have
a chance to exchange horror stories
with your friends about how you for-
got the last zero when you entered
10100110 from the console on your
374th Byte and messed up the program
that had just taken you two hours to
put into memory. It just isn’t fair.
Since we use full buffering on all data,
address and control lines on all boards
in our system and since we use low
power 2102 static memories in our
system, there are no noise sensitivity
problems that can lead to hours of fun
trying to figure out why a program
“bombed”. Dynamic memories that
some others use can drop bits, fail
to refresh random cells, cause programs
to do crazy things by going into
a refresh cycle at the wrong moment
and all kinds of interesting things. Our
poor customers will never have a chance
to have these interesting experiences.
Even our documentation and software
is no help. Not only do we have the
most complete and thorough set of
instructions available for any system,
we are supplying software either
free, or at crazy low prices. Our big
documentation notebook for instance
is just full of information on the sys-
stem. There are complete sections on
software with sample programs and
information on programming. We have
no assembly instructions in that big
yellow notebook. They are packed
with the kits themselves. The note-
book is completely devoted to instruc-
tion on using your computer system.
You are therefore not going to be
spending day after jolly day trying to
find out how to put a program into
your machine; researching all available
outside literature in an attempt to dis-
cover just how you write software for
the beast. Sorry about that folks, we
didn’t mean to spoil all your fun.
So please, have a heart, when you see
those poor lonely souls that have pur-
chased our systems say “‘hello’’. All
they have to keep them interested in
computers is writing and running pro-
grams. Our editor, assembler, 4K and
8K BASIC programs work so well that
even this is quick and easy. So be kind
to those poor bored SwTPC-6800
owners, it’s not their fault that they
have nothing to talk about.
Sule SSOo
Computer System
with serial interface and 2,048 words
of memory.............. $395.00
ee ee ee ee ee ae ee ee
ing’’ computers.
NAME
ADDRESS
CITY
‘*
ees ee ee et ee ee ee dS SS ee
[_] | don’t like puzzles anyway and have no free time to be bored so
send information on your 6800 computer system and peripherals.
(_] Thanks for warning me. Send names of manufacturers of “interest-
STATE ZIP.
Southwest Technical Products Corp., Box 32040, San Antonio, Texas 78284
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‘Our computer is a bore…’
SWTPC 6800 was a Motorola 6800-based computer produced by the Southwest Technical Products Corporation (SWTPC) with a clock speed of 980Khz. Available in kit form, the SWTPC 6800 shipped with 4Kb of RAM and a serial interface capable of connecting to standard terminals of the day.
An archive of SWTPC 6800-related material can be found at SWTPC.com.
A playlist of videos of the SWTPC 6800 can be viewed here.
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