A love letter to the Sphere computer
[Ben Z] loves the Sphere computer, a very early entry into the personal computer boom of the mid-1970s. The 6800 processor was unique in its time in that it was a complete system , At least in theory. If you could afford the whole system, you had a nice case with a keyboard and a memory-mapped display board. You can see an excellent video tour of the system below the break.
The sphere suffered from a few issues, none of which were easily foreseeable by its designer. First, the 6800 didn't get the traction that 8080-derived processors did. Second, the S-100 bus would prove popular, but that almost always meant an 8080-type processor in practice. Third, while an all-in-one system was the right idea, it was expensive at the time, and many people would opt for something cheaper even if it had less capability. People also wanted to take advantage of hardware they might already have. It was easier to imagine plugging a surplus TeleType into, say, a more conventional computer than a Sphere that expected its own display hardware and keyboard.
A CPU board for the Sphere was $522 as a kit; the whole computer was $860 or $1,400 if you wanted it assembled. If you wanted a modem and tape interface, you'd spend about $100 more. For $2,250 you can get an assembled computer with 20K of memory with the modem/cassette. A diskette and printer system costs $8,000, and for some reason the company's advertisements say you could spend up to $11,300, but it doesn't say what for.
Unlike many similar computers which used a card edge connector, the Sphere used ribbon cables to connect the cards. According to the video, this was a common point of failure for the Sphere. The mini assembler was odd enough, presumably to fit in the cramped ROM. It used hexadecimal codes but was able to handle labels and addresses to make writing machine code a bit easier.
The computer was more or less contemporary with the SOL 20, another somewhat similar all-in-one. While the Sphere was a little earlier, this was done in 1977. The SOL 20 appeared soon after but continued through 1979. The 12,000 SOL-20s sold dwarf the sales of the Sphere that might have to be around 1,300 units. However, the IBM PC would appear and wipe out all of these machines. If you want to know more about the Sphere, there's an hour-long video from the Vintage Computer Federation featuring [Ben Z] talking about the computer. You can watch this video below.
Everyone "knew" the workstation was coming, but we didn't know exactly how. While the SOL-20 may have been a few months behind the Sphere, there were previously all-in-one commercial machines like the MCM/70 which cost nearly $10,000 and the IBM 5100 ($9,000 ).
[Ben Z] loves the Sphere computer, a very early entry into the personal computer boom of the mid-1970s. The 6800 processor was unique in its time in that it was a complete system , At least in theory. If you could afford the whole system, you had a nice case with a keyboard and a memory-mapped display board. You can see an excellent video tour of the system below the break.
The sphere suffered from a few issues, none of which were easily foreseeable by its designer. First, the 6800 didn't get the traction that 8080-derived processors did. Second, the S-100 bus would prove popular, but that almost always meant an 8080-type processor in practice. Third, while an all-in-one system was the right idea, it was expensive at the time, and many people would opt for something cheaper even if it had less capability. People also wanted to take advantage of hardware they might already have. It was easier to imagine plugging a surplus TeleType into, say, a more conventional computer than a Sphere that expected its own display hardware and keyboard.
A CPU board for the Sphere was $522 as a kit; the whole computer was $860 or $1,400 if you wanted it assembled. If you wanted a modem and tape interface, you'd spend about $100 more. For $2,250 you can get an assembled computer with 20K of memory with the modem/cassette. A diskette and printer system costs $8,000, and for some reason the company's advertisements say you could spend up to $11,300, but it doesn't say what for.
Unlike many similar computers which used a card edge connector, the Sphere used ribbon cables to connect the cards. According to the video, this was a common point of failure for the Sphere. The mini assembler was odd enough, presumably to fit in the cramped ROM. It used hexadecimal codes but was able to handle labels and addresses to make writing machine code a bit easier.
The computer was more or less contemporary with the SOL 20, another somewhat similar all-in-one. While the Sphere was a little earlier, this was done in 1977. The SOL 20 appeared soon after but continued through 1979. The 12,000 SOL-20s sold dwarf the sales of the Sphere that might have to be around 1,300 units. However, the IBM PC would appear and wipe out all of these machines. If you want to know more about the Sphere, there's an hour-long video from the Vintage Computer Federation featuring [Ben Z] talking about the computer. You can watch this video below.
Everyone "knew" the workstation was coming, but we didn't know exactly how. While the SOL-20 may have been a few months behind the Sphere, there were previously all-in-one commercial machines like the MCM/70 which cost nearly $10,000 and the IBM 5100 ($9,000 ).
What's Your Reaction?
