Smoke Signal Advert - December 1978
From Byte - The Small Systems Journal
Smoke Signal Broadcasting: Hail to the Chieftain
Founded in 1976 as a supplier of plug-in boards for SWTPC's 6800 micro, Smoke Signal Broadcasting is a bit of an obscure entry in the canon of early computing.
The machine in the advert - The Chieftain - ran a 2MHz Motorola 6800 CPU on an SS-50 bus, one of relatively few non-S-100 architectures around at the time and which was first developed by SWTPC in 1975 for its own 6800-based machines[1].
It also had 32K memory and was probably also the pinnacle of the "computer as furniture", as it claims a "stylish leather-grained cabinet".
Smoke Signal Broadcasting also appeared to produce a lot of software for 6800-based machines, calling itself the "Chief" in this field. This is one of eight quarter-page ads which appear on sequential pages in November 1978's Byte - it's for the company's SD-2 6800 BASIC compiler, available for $325, or about £1,710 in 2025
Smoke Signal's machine sold in the US for $2,595 and up, or about £13,400 in 2025. When it reached the UK, the entry-level Chieftain 1 retailed for £1,897 in 1979 (about £13,600 in 2025 prices), whereas the Chieftain 3 - as per the model 1 but with twin double-sided 8" floppies - went for £2,846 - a snip at around £20,400[2]
Date created: 01 July 2012
Last updated: 11 December 2024
Sources
Text and otherwise-uncredited photos © nosher.net 2025. Dollar/GBP conversions, where used, assume $1.50 to £1. "Now" prices are calculated dynamically using average RPI per year.