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This historic machine and its companion, the Intellec-4, which employed the Intel 4004 CPU, were the first American microcomputers ever to be sold and pre-date the Altair 8800 by almost two years.
The Intellec Microcomputer Development Systems (MDS) were complete computers intended for the development of Intel microcomputer based products. They included a main unit with CPU, RAM, ROM, I/O and interrupt circuitry, as well as all necessary software: Assembler, linker, debugger.
Optional EPROM programmer and In-Circuit Emulator (ICE) allowed real-time emulation and diagnostics into user configured system before saving final program into an EPROM.
The Intel company offered the Intellec systems as a development system for their microprocessors: Intellec 4 and Intellec 40 for the 4-Bit microprocessors i4004 and i4040, Intellec 8 and Intellec 8 mod 80 for the 8-Bit processors.
Due to not calling the DEC-PDP-Computer "computer", the Intellec systems only imitated a minicomputer with their complex, but senseless front panel: a front panel is obligatory for a computer with a core memory, which does not have a ROM, to bring the loader to the memory once at start up.
A microcomputer system with a ROM and a RAM has a monitoring program in its ROM in any case, so the computer can be completely operated via the serial interface with a teletype. By the way, it is not possible to show the internal registers at the lamp registers, as it is possible at a processor built with the TTL technology.
Right beside the front panel, there are two Textool sockets, where 1702 EPROMS (256 Bytes, programming voltage 48V at the data inputs) can be programmed.
Our model no. is 884 with a serial no. of 00139
Kindly Donated by Callum Wilson.
With thanks to http://www.dvq.com/oldcomp/micros.htm for the original photograph without the cover.
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This exhibit has a reference ID of CH3366. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.