Netronics Advert - March 1979
From Practical Computing
This is the famous ELF II computer
The apparently-famous ELF II from Netronics Research and Development Limited of New Milford, Connecticut, was one of relatively few micros around which used RCA's COSMAC - COmplementary Symmetry Monolithic Array Computer - 1802 CPU, a chip which was aimed at the video developer market created by games like Atari's Pong.
Its name was apparently based on the previous COSMAC ELF - a similar RCA 1802 microcomputer built in parts via a series of articles which ran in Popular Electronics magazine in 1976 and '77[1].
The bare-board system - in an unusual cheese-wedge configuration - was available from the UK sole importer H. L. Audio Limited for £108, which is around £690 in 2024. It came with 256 bytes - although that was expandable to 64K - plus a decent hexadecimal keyboard for input.
It was also fairly unusual for a bare-board in coming with a built-in expansion bus, offering five slots. However, the minimal system didn't actually come with any sockets soldered in, so that was a job left for the purchaser.
There might be other stuff mentioned in the advert, but it's in the tiniest text which is barely readable even in the original magazine.
Date created: 07 October 2024
Sources
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