8008 &8080 - microprocessor -comments about the origin of Intel's first 8 bit micro chips

Bugbooks

I have had some interesting emails from Jack Frassanito. Jack was brought into Computer Terminal Corporation (later called Datapoint) along with Vic Poor, Jonathan Schmidt, Harry Pyle and a team of designers, engineers and programmers to create the Datapoint 2200. Footnote 1

All the photos below were sent to me by Jack Frassanito and are part of his intellectual property.

"CLICK" on photo's to enlarge

Datapoint 2200

CTC's TTL-based desktop personal 8 bit computer, called the Datapoint 2200, was unveiled in 1970, with cassette tapes for 130KB of mass storage and 8K of internal memory.

The first end user sale was to a chicken farmer in the South who programmed the Datapoint 2200 to write payroll checks. You could say a chicken farmer was the first  user of a programmable personal computer.

The Datapoint 2200 in our Museum is a Datapoint 2200 version II and Jack just furnished more information about the version II - Here are his comments.

"Also the instruction set for the 8080 was also a Datapoint II (less two instructions). So not only was the 8008 a Datapoint computer so was the 8080. The story is in the chapter about Datapoint and Intel. The Datapoint II was an order of magnitude faster than the Datapoint I.

Gus and I argued for owning the rights to the microprocessor but at the time it was easer to upgrade the TTL version and by the time the 8080 was available we were working on a much faster processor.

Chapter 12 (Lamont Wood's book) is a good first person account of how the 8080 came about based on the Datapoint II processor design. (Less two instructions). Dave (Dave Monroe at Datapoint) wrote a translator that would run Datapoint software on the 8080 but it never gained any traction with management. Another dumb mistake.

The 8080 was approximately 100 times faster than the 8008. 

This is significant step in function and solidified the microprocessors place in the history computing."

Footnote 4

Video by Datapoint about the 2200 "CLICK"

The 8 bit computer - Datapoint 1100 "CLICK"

"CLICK" on photo's to enlarge

Datapoint 2200 Patent

"As a named inventor (Jack Frassanito) of the 2200 I also negotiated the original agreement with Bob Noyce of Intel to develop the 8008. It was a fulsome debate at the time and we lost the argument within Datapoint." Footnote 2

Jack is referring to giving up the intellectual rights to the first microprocessor based on the 8 bit computer logic in the 2200. Datapoint  contracted with Intel to design the logic of the 2200 into one chip for $50,000.  However in the end Datapoint agreed to give the rights to Intel and did not pay the $50,000. This became the 8008 microprocessor and launched Intel into the very successful microprocessor business.  

Datapoint gives up right to the 8008 microprocessor - see part of story here "CLICK"

"CLICK" on photo's to enlarge

Datapoint 2200 Patent 

Datapoint 2200.
Patent 224,515 dated July 25,1972 - filed November 27th,1970.

Jack Frassanito, J.Phillip Ray  and Gus Roche

Jack Frassanito, J.Phillip Ray  and Gus Roche at Dr.McClure meeting. They produced the Datapoint 2200 computer and their names are on the U. S. Design patent 223,415 filed November 27,1970. Footnote 1

Gordon Peterson 

Gordon Peterson worked for Datapoint for 9 years and had a inside view of the of personalities, creation of products and the rise & fall of the company.

Gordon Peterson Jun 11, 2014 • Computer Terminal Corporation 2200 - Start of Intel 8008 Microprocessor Footnote 3

"The Datapoint 2200 was a revolutionary machine for a whole lot of reasons.  It was the first general-purpose computer designed for single-user, desktop use, and that looked more like a piece of office equipment than like a piece of exotic electronics.  I worked in Software Development / Advanced Product Development / R&D at Datapoint for more than 9 years, and it was a very rewarding time.   I designed and wrote the world's first commercially available LAN software there... the company sold over a billion dollars' worth of that product.  I also was the lead developer of the disk operating system there for several years.  A lot of us Datapoint folks are on the DatapointComputers Yahoogroup.  Also, there's a wonderful book about Datapoint's key role in the creation of personal computing... highly recommended." Footnote 3

More info from Gordon Peterson 10-29-15

 I found out about the Datapoint 2200 back about '71-'72, and among other things wrote (in assembler!) a 2200 emulator (which ran Datapoint's Cassette Tape Operating System, CTOS!) that ran on the University's IBM 360/75 mainframe.  ;-)   I showed some of my programs to Datapoint at their booth at the National Computer Conference in Chicago in spring 1974, and by they talked me into moving to San Antonio to work for the company in Software Development.

My first program I wrote there was the REFORMAT utility, and then took over the job of modifying their Disk Operating System to work on the new 25-Mb 2314-type disk drives, and the new 8" floppy diskette drives (and then reworked it for the new 5500 and 6600 series processors).  Wrote several other utilities (and heavily modified many more) and combined the DOS itself and many utilities (and their documentation) into a more cohesive product, which became DOS.B (2200/25Mb), DOS.A (2200/2.5Mb), DOS.C (2200/floppy), DOS.D (5500/25Mb), and DOS.E (5500/2.5Mb).  There was also a DOS.F (5500/floppy), which was never released as a product.

Worked on many other products and internal stuff, including the Partition Supervisor (which could run multiple copies of the DOS on one computer) and then proposed and wrote The ARC System, the world's first commercially available local area network.  That product changed the world of computing forever from monolithic mainframes to modular architectures and incremental expandability.Footnote 5.

"CLICK" on photo's to enlarge

Story by Lamont Wood

Easy to read text of this article "CLICK"

Story by Lamont Wood. Lamont later wrote the book "Datapoint- The lost Story of the Texans who invented the personal Computer Revolution"

Lamont's book is very interesting and I recommend you read it if you are interested in the first days of the microprocessor and microcomputer revolution.  More information here "CLICK" (Ed S thank you for this link.)

Amazon Best  Seller 

Lamont Wood's book "Datapoint- The lost Story of the Texans who invented the personal Computer Revolution" available on Amazon.

My comments about Lamont Woods book.





Information about the Datapoint 1100 "CLICK"


Works cited.
Footnote 1 - Lamont Wood's book "Datapoint- The lost Story of the Texans who invented the personal Computer Revolution" back cover & page 318.
Footnote 2 -This is from email to me from Jack Frassanito Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 3:23 PM.
Footnote 3- This is from email to me from Gordon Peterson.
Footnote 4- Email sent to me Sat, Apr 25, 2015 at 3:19 AM.
Footnote 5- From Comment By Gordon Peterson on this blog a posted October 19,2015.

David Larsen

The email's from Jack Frassanito and Gordon Peterson gave me some great inside information about the Datapoint 8 bit computer story. I recommend reading Lamont Wood's book - lots of info about the development of the first microprocessor at Intel as well as the Datapoint story.

 ^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}     Send Message    Like us on Facebook  My Blog about hometown Floyd VA

Vintage Computer Collector Memorabilia - Titus 8080 Microprocessor Slide Rule

                                                                                                                               

Museum Bugs

Vintage computer collecting for many collectors includes many different types memorabilia in addition to vintage computers.  Popular memorabilia include such items as advertising posters, outdoor signs furnished to attract customers, sales counter displays, T-shirts with logo, aids used in programming, original manuals/data sheets, interesting photos, counter displays, magazines, news letters, programming aids -- the list does not end.
                                                      
I have mentioned in the past my colleague Dr. 

John Titus 8080 octal code card 

 John Titus was very creative designer. One of his many creative designs was an 8080 microprocessor  programming aid the "8080 Octal Code Card" slide rule. This  was extremely useful aid for programming the 8080 at the assembly level or in pure machine code.  This was marketed for a few years in the late 70's & I doubt if many still exist. This is a great collectable memorabilia for computer retro geeks.I show how this is used and give a little demonstration in the video.

Update 11-27-15 I still have some of these cards - just contact me if you would like one. 
Just located a group of 50 of these in our Bugbook Computer Warehouse and they look just like the day they were made - Sharp.  I will be glad to share these with memorabilia collectors for $5 including shipping 
. Contact me here.                                       

                         

One of my reasons for writing about  the 8080 slide rule to point out the use of our Bug's.  The bugs were part of our "Blacksburg Group" branding effort more than 40 years.  I still use them to help identify and connect my present work to the "Blacksburg Group" which I was a part of during its 10 years of operation in the 70's & early 80's. I call this a slide rule because it has a slider inside and by sliding it to the proper position you had all the machine code instructions for the 8080 at in one neat package. Only the geeks that program microcomputers in machine code and being able to program one machine program step at a time really care about this.

John Titus 8080 octal code card

 The origin of how we created these bugs is an interesting story and I will tell about that in a future post. Just a hint - the integrated circuit (IC) chip of the 70's looked somewhat like a real bug.  The chip had many connecting pins making it look like a bug with many legs.

Integrated Circuit (IC) looks like Bug

Most of the designs and writing our group did was about digital electronics and the most  digital electronic circuits were contained in these IC chips. We thought it was a unique idea to have some original characture bugs as a branding logo. The first use of the bugs was with Bugbooks I & II  just before we formed the "Blacksburg Group. These Bugs were on literally on several million products. The "Blacksburg Continuing Education" books series by itself has more than a million in print. They have been out of print for more than 30 years however you can still go to Amazon and find most available from used book sellers. Many have become collector items - some in new condition are selling for up to $500.  Try this - go to amazon.com book section and type in "Blacksburg Continuing Education Series Books" and check it out. I was sure surprised to see the asking price for some of the books in our old series. I guess these books are part of the vintage memorabilia I am writing about in this post. Also notice you will see the Bugs in the upper right hand corner of every book.

The bugs are currently owned by my colleague Dr. John Titus and I use them with his permission.

  Appreciate a like on Museum Facebook Page.

Chantilly Farm

David Larsen KK4WW

 People often have a  specific image such as "Professor" , "Teacher" "Amateur Radio guy" "Farmer" and in these posting if you had no other reference I would most likely be "The Computer Collector fellow".  I want to  tell about one other hat I wear is  - "Chantilly Farm"  Owned by my wife Gaynell and I. This is a 200 acre 'Festival Farm'  in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Floyd County Virginia. Chantilly farm is managed by the LCF Group and our Promotion Manager is Jason Gallimore, Jason books all the great music for Chantilly. We have other good help as well. What do we do at Chantilly Farm? Take a look here www.chantillyfarm.com . 

 Have a great week -"by David Larsen" Computer Collector/Historian