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by Kenneth Ogden

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The legendary Homebrew Computer Club was the first of its kind, and provided an early impetus for the development of the microcomputer industry in Silicon Valley. Its first meeting in March 1975 was held in one of its members' garage in Menlo Park in Santa Clara County. The Homebrew members were engineers and computer enthusiasts who discussed a number of technical topics. The club attracted many hobbyists and was attended by nearly 750 people one year after its foundation. The Homebrew Computer Club had its own philosophy. People meet, because they were interested in computers and liked tinkering with them, for non-commercial reasons - at least in its early times. Its members "exchanged information about all aspects of microcomputing's technology" and talked about devices they had designed. From its ranks came the founders of many microcomputer companies - for example Bob Marsh, Adam Osborne, or Steve Jobs and Steven Wozniak - the famous Apple founders.

The Homebrew Computer Club is the place where the roots of many Silicon Valley microcomputer companies are located. It spawned a revolution in microprocessing and represents an important step in the development of a multi-billion dollar industry.
The summer of 1975 at the Homebrew Club the Intel 8080 formed the center of the universe. The Altair was built around the 8080 and its early popularity spawned a cottage industry of small companies that either made machines that would run programs written for the Altair or made attachments that would plug into the various kinds of micro computers.
Z80 microprocessor from Zilog was available in February. The first computer that used this CPU was the Z-1 from Cramenco.
The relative low price of the 6501 ($25USD) was the reason why Steve Wozniak selected this processor for his first computer the Apple I (the predecessor of the Apple II). The 6502 processor was soon to be used in Commodore computers. At this point the Intel 8080 cost about $150. It is on the Homebrew Computer club in Palo Alto, California (Silicon Valley), that Steve Wozniak, 26 years old, working at Hewlett-Packard and a long time hacker, wished to have his own computer.He already designed several computers on paper and even wrote FORTRAN and Basic interpreters for these theoretical machines, but lack of money left these machines in the theoretical phase. He was interested in the Intel 8080 chip (the heart of the Altair), but decided that it cost too much money. This decision not to use the 8080 was regarded as a stupid move by the other members of the club.
The flaw with microprocessors was that a program or device designed for it would not work on any other processor. The "connection" for devices for the Altair was known as the S-100 bus because it used one hundred signal lines. Disciples of the 8080 made attachments to the 8080 and S-100 even though they readily admitted that the s-100 bus was poorly designed. The people who wrote programs or built peripherals for 8080 computers thought that later competing microprocessors were doomed. The sheer weight of the programs and the choice of peripherals, so the argument went, would make it more useful to more users and more profitable for more companies. The 8080, they liked to say, had critical mass which was sufficient to consign anything else to oblivion."

Learn more about this author, Kenneth Ogden.

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