Source: Byte – April 1977
This ad is from the April 1977 issue of Byte. There were some crazy computer designs in the early days of personal computing. What is promised in this ad from ECD for the MicroMind sounds absolutely insane for the time. It sounds almost too good to be true and in the end I guess it was. Development of the MicroMind began in 1975 or 1976 and this ad appeared in 1977 but it never shipped in quantity.
The features listed in the ad include a 6500A-series CPU, 8K of memory, 80-key software definable keyboard, I/O interface board, “high-detail” graphics and character display processor, connections for up to four tape recorders (disk drives were absurdly expensive at the time). None of these features are too crazy but that comes in the capabilities it promised. Specifically, those include an interconnect bus that could handle up to 15 additional CPUs that could operate in parallel and theoretical expandability to 64 Megabytes. Of course, there weren’t memory chips with high enough capacity to reach anywhere near that at the time and it would have cost as much as a small country. It wasn’t compatible with anything else but at the time that was largely the norm. There was no IBM PC or DOS yet and even CP/M was still in its early days.
The CPU was actually a MOS Technology 6502 (or 6512) running at 4-MHz. That was a pretty fast CPU for the time and this is a similar CPU to what was found in the Apple II, Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 (though those ran at lower clock speeds) among others.
If you wanted to, based on this ad alone, you could cut out the order form at the bottom and mail a check or provide credit card info for the rather specific total of $987.54. While that amount isn’t exactly chump change today, it was a whole lot more in 1977. Adjusted for inflation it is the equivalent of over $5000 in 1977. I can’t imagine just mailing off a check for that amount based on an ad like this. But there were people who did and some of them regretted it.
According to old-computers.com, the company went bankrupt because of the cancellation of a single large order of machines. It was not complete vaporware as there were at least a few early systems released. However, many of those who placed an order did not get either the machine nor a refund. There is a Wikipedia article on the company ECD which also mentions the MicroMind though it doesn’t mention issues with the Micromind shipping and says the company was in business until 1983. It also says they won a $1.38 million contract in May 1977 to supply 1,000 MicroMinds to public schools via Avakian System Corporation. Maybe this was the deal that got cancelled? There is also mention of a Micromind II by the president of ECD in a 1978 issue of Electronic Design 2.
Whatever the truth of the matter is, the MicroMind is no doubt a rare computer. And mailing off the equivalent of $5,000 plus based on a single ad is still a bad idea.
