Manufacturer

Intertec Data Systems (US)

Model

Superbrain I & II

Date Launched

1980 (model I), 1982 (model II)

Price

£1700 to £2800 depending on RAM and floppy disk capacity

Microprocessor type

Two Zilog Z80As @ 4 MHz
One processor controlled the disk drives, the other did everything else.

ROM size

2 kilobytes

Standard RAM

32 kilobytes

Maximum RAM

64 kilobytes

Keyboard type

Typewriter style with numeric pad

Supplied language

None built-in but BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN and APL could be loaded from disk.

Text resolution

80 columns x 24 rows

Graphics resolution

560 x 240 pixels

Colours available

Monochrome
The monitor was specially designed so that characters were properly focussed over the whole screen.

Sound

Beeps

Cassette load speed

No cassette interface.
Was supplied with two built-in 5¼ inch floppy disk drives holding 180 KB on the model I or 750 KB on the model II.
For only an extra £2950 you could have a 10 megabyte hard disk drive.

Dimensions (mm)
Weight (grams)

544 x 586 x 370
20400

Special features

All-in-one unit containing keyboard, electronics, 12 inch monitor and two disk drives in a single case.
Used the S-100 bus, an early standard interface for connecting peripherals.

Good points

Smart, modern appearance.
Ran the CP/M operating system.
RS-232C interface.

Bad points

Far too expensive for the home market.

How successful?

Not known.

Comments

As a self-contained system the Superbrain could feasibly be moved from office to office.
Was clearly aimed at the top end of the business market and CP/M applications including wordprocessing, spreadsheets, inventory, accounting etc. were available.
Intertec (later called Wells American Corporation) went on to make Intel 8086-based computers and, from the mid 1980s, fully IBM compatible 80286 and 80386 machines.