#The KIM-1
(Yeah, it's trivia, really)…
The KIM-1 was developed by MOS Technology Inc., as a development
board for the 6502 microprocessor. The original designers of the
6502 needed something to show it on.
Byte magazine sneered at the KIM-1: " .. it might be satisfactory
for people who are not able to build their own computers .. ", but in
fact the first fully-assembled microcomputer (not including power
supply) created something that hadn't existed before: a user group
whose members all had the same machine. (Hey, if you built a MITS
Altair, you put on whatever RAM you could dredge up, whatever I/O
device you could find, and whatever operating system you could hack).
Over a year later, MOS Technology Inc. was taken over by Commodore,
who wanted the company for their chip-manufacturing facilities. It
was said that Jack Tramiel was astonished when an MOS Technology
employee suggested building a thing called a personal computer.
You can't quite call the KIM-1 a "desktop" computer. It was a
single circuit board, about 8-1/2 by 11. You could put rubber feet
on it and plunk it on a desk, I suppose; but with a 20-key hex pad
and a 6-digit LED display, and a power supply hanging off the side,
it wasn't the handiest desk accessory.