Viatron
Viatron is another interesting but mostly forgotten company. It began as a hugely-publicized startup founded in November, 1967. About a year later, they announced System 21, a 16-bit minicomputer with smart terminals, tape drives, and a printer, built from custom MOS chips. The plan was volume: by building a large number of systems, they hoped to produce the chips inexpensively and lease the systems at amazingly low prices—computer rental for $99 a month.[20] Unfortunately, Viatron ran into poor chip yields, delays, and price increases. As a result, the company went spectacularly bankrupt in March 1971.
The Viatron System 21: color display, terminal keyboard, 'robot' printer, and computer. From Viatron brochure, via bitsavers.org.
Viatron is literally the originator of the microprocessor—they were the first to use the word "microprocessor" in their October 1968 announcement of the 2101 microprocessor. However, this microprocessor wasn't a chip—it was an entire smart terminal, leasing for the incredibly low price of $20 a month. Viatron used the term microprocessor to describe the whole desktop unit complete with keyboard and tape drives. Inside the microprocessor cabinet were a bunch of boards—the processor itself consisted of 18 custom MOS chips on 3 boards, with more boards of custom MOS and CMOS chips for the keyboard interface, tape drive, memory, and video display.
The 3-board processor inside the 2101 was specialized for its terminal role. It read and wrote multiple I/O control lines, moved data between I/O devices and memory, updated the display, and provided serial input and output.[20] The processor was very limited, not even providing arithmetic. Nonetheless, I think the Viatron 2101 "microprocessor" can be considered the first (multichip) MOS/LSI processor, shipping before the Four Phase System/IV.
CPU board #2 of three from the Viatron System 21 terminal. Top row holds two RAR register chips and six ROM chips. Bottom chips are IBR multiplexer, flag chip and ROM multiplexer, Photo courtesy of UMMR.
Viatron also built an advanced general-purpose 16-bit computer, the 62-pound 2140 minicomputer, which leased for $99 a month and came with a Fortran compiler. It had 4K 16-bit words of core memory and two 16-bit arithmetic units. The microcoded processor had an extensive instruction set including multiply and divide operations, and supported 48-bit arithmetic. Coming on the market slightly before the Four-Phase computer, the Viatron 2140 appears to be the first MOS/LSI general-purpose computer. Unfortunately, sales were poor and the 2140 projected ended in 1973.
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