Processor Technology Sol

Sol-20 with it's distinctive blue color and wooden sides
Sol-20 with its distinctive blue color and wooden sides

The Altair, the IMSAI, and then later, many other microcomputers created a cottage industry. MITS and IMS Associates only offered a limited number of products and upgrades, if you could get them given the high demand for them at the time. Gary Ingram and Bob Marsh, two friends in Berkeley, California, saw this as a business opportunity. Marsh, an active member of the Homebrew Computer Club, would hear complaints about the Altair at every club meeting, so with Ingram, they decided to form a company called Processor Technology Inc. Their first product was a reliable, static 4 kB memory board for the Altair, as they knew that MITS was producing an unreliable dynamic version. Processor Technology’s 4KRA RAM board became an almost instant hit and launched the company into a thriving business. Ingram and Marsh were then able to move out of their garage workshop and into a large industrial facility.

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