The C-10 is Cromemco's only attempt to step in the market of personal and
family oriented computers.
The goal was to compete with Apple II's and IBM
PC's in small businesses as they started getting equipped with computer
systems.
This standard CP/M based system featured a 12'' screen housing a single motherboard, without extension capabilities (no S-100 bus), a keyboard and floppy drive.
The CDOS operating system (a CP/M variant) came with several business software tools (spreadsheet, word processor, BASIC language).
Please consider donating your old computer / videogame system to Old-Computers.com or one of our partners from anywhere in the world (Europe, America, Asia, etc.).
I worked for Cromemco just before the C10 was introduced. I ourchased one and used it for a few years. It had one Z80 cpu to run both the video and the computer part. It was shipped to run CDOS, Cromemco''s version of C/PM. Of course it could also run C/PM.
It was used as a smart standalone terminal and used with the larger S-100 bus machines that ran CROMIX the Unix look a like by Cromemco.
Saturday 10th December 2011
Jerry Lopez (Alabama/USA)
At the time they were banking on a contract to sell the c-10 to the us post office.
Wednesday 20th July 2011
CRAIG
It was very difficult to tell what Cromemco were trying to achieve with the C10. They'd made their name as a vendor of beautifully-engineered S-100 "crate" systems with excellent graphics boards available, and then came out with this stunted little terminal-lookalike with no graphical abilities at all - just at the point that CP/M was dying.
The good point was that the build quality was, by the standards of the day, superb - it was much nicer to use than (say) a Superbrain. It really seemed to be in competition with the Xerox 820, although its relatively low-profile looks probably made it a slightly easier sell into executive/professional environments than the horrible boxy 820...
But what it was missing was Cromemco's wonderful colour graphics....
