PolyMorphic Systems
| File:PolyMorphic Systems wordmark.svg | |
| Industry | Electronics |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1976 |
| Headquarters | Santa Barbara, California |
| Products | desktop computer systems |
PolyMorphic Systems specialized in manufacturing microcomputer boards and complete systems utilizing the S-100 bus architecture. Their product lineup included models such as the Poly-88 and the System 8813. Established in California in 1976 under the name Interactive Products Corporation, operating as PolyMorphic Systems, the company was originally located in Goleta before moving to Santa Barbara, California.
S-100 boards
The company’s earliest offerings consisted of interface cards designed for the widely adopted S-100 bus, compatible with microcomputers like the Altair 8800 and IMSAI 8080. The initial product was an A/D and D/A board, succeeded by a video terminal interface (VTI) card that became the main display solution for their computer systems. Subsequently, they introduced additional cards including CPU, RAM, and disk controller boards.
Poly-88
With the introduction of their CPU card, PolyMorphic began offering full system packages. The first system, named Poly-88, featured a 5-slot S-100 chassis equipped with connectors on the side to facilitate expansion. Often referred to as the "orange toaster" due to its distinctive orange metal casing and the heat generated by the S-100 cards, it was available both as a kit and as a fully assembled product. Initially called Micro-Altair, the name was changed following objections from MITS, the maker of Altair.
Hardware
The Poly-88 system’s board set comprised:
- Central Processing Unit (CPU) board incorporating an Intel 8080 processor along with an 8251 USART for serial communications with devices such as modems, printers, or cassette tape interfaces. It supported program storage and retrieval via consumer cassette recorders using either the Kansas City standard or faster Manchester code. This board included 512 bytes of RAM and a 1024-byte ROM.
- Video Terminal Interface (VTI) offering a display of 16 lines by 64 characters, designed for output to televisions through an RF modulator or composite video input. It supported low-resolution graphics (text semigraphics) at a resolution of 128x48 pixels, similar to that of the original TRS-80. The VTI also featured a TTL-level parallel keyboard interface; multiple keyboard options were available, including one with a numeric keypad.
- RAM expansion cards ranging between 8K and 56K bytes, which was the maximum supported by the system. Given its S-100 bus compatibility, users could also install memory cards produced by other manufacturers.
Software
The Poly-88’s ROM contained a boot loader capable of loading programs from cassette tape storage. Software offerings included games, utility programs, a BASIC interpreter, and an 8080 assembler.
System 8813
The System 8813 from PolyMorphic was a disk-oriented system featuring a chassis that accommodated one to three 5-inch Shugart minifloppy drives. These drives used single-sided, single-density hard-sectored floppy disks with an approximate capacity of 90K bytes each.
Hardware
The System 8813 was equipped with standard CPU and VTI cards, accompanied by a RAM card typically providing a minimum of 32K memory, and a disk controller card designed for the minifloppy drives. Subsequent versions introduced a Z80-based disk controller that supported both double-sided, double-density minifloppy disks as well as full-size (8-inch) floppy drives.
Software
The disk operating system, known as Exec, utilized numbered drives enclosed in angle brackets (for example, <1>) rather than traditional drive letters. File names were case-sensitive and could extend up to 31 characters, with two-character extensions such as .GO for executable files, .BS for BASIC programs, and .OV for overlays that expanded the operating system's code capacity. An INITIAL.TX file could be configured to run commands automatically during startup, functioning similarly to MS-DOS's AUTOEXEC.BAT.
In later iterations of Exec, support for subdirectories was introduced through the use of nested angle brackets (e.g., <2<Projects<Dan<Accounts.TX). Directories were generated automatically when applications saved files within these structures.
Included software for the System 8813 featured an 8080 macro assembler and a BASIC interpreter optimized with BCD arithmetic to ensure financial calculation accuracy. The WordMaster word-processing package integrated both a text editor and formatter; notably, author Stuart Woods composed his novel Run Before the Wind using WordMaster on a PolyMorphic 8813.
System 8810
The System 8810 incorporated double-sided, double-density minifloppy drives with roughly 360K bytes of storage capacity, comparable to the original IBM-PC floppy drives. This capability allowed Exec, application software, and data to be stored on a single floppy disk. While functionally equivalent to the 8813, it was housed in a more compact chassis featuring five expansion slots and one minifloppy drive.
Mass Storage
The 88/MS (Mass Storage) cabinet contained two 8-inch floppy drives available in single- or double-sided formats with double-density hard-sectored media. This unit could be attached to either an 8813 or an 8810 system. The largest configurations from Poly included three mini-floppy drives alongside four full-size drives, numbered sequentially from 1 through 7.
The 88/HD subsystem offered an 18 MB SASI hard disk installed within an 8810 chassis. Volume Manager software allowed partitioning of this storage into multiple logical drives, functioning similarly to FDISK utilities found in other operating systems.
TwinSystem
Promoted under the slogan "Get more work done on a computer built for two," the System 8813 TwinSystem added a second RAM card, video card, and keyboard. By employing bank switching between RAM cards, it enabled two applications to execute simultaneously in memory. However, the TTL-level keyboard interface restricted the distance between user stations to only a few feet.
CP/M Compatibility
Although CP/M was the leading operating system for microcomputers at the time, unmodified Poly systems were unable to run it due to:
- Use of hard-sectored floppy disks incompatible with CP/M’s soft-sectored disk format.
- Memory mapping conflicts—CP/M required continuous RAM from addresses 0000 to FFFF hex, whereas Poly systems mapped ROM and video memory within the range 0000 to 1FFF.
Later hardware revisions resolved these memory mapping conflicts, allowing a version of CP/M to operate on the System 8813.