OCTART 8 Channel Communications Processor

OCTART 8 Channel Communications Processor

In the earliest days for Cromemco a computer might run a single user single tasking Operating System like Cromemco CDOS. Here one would need at a minimum a single serial port interface to connect an ASCII terminal to a Cromemco computer.

Since it was necessary to have a Cromemco floppy disk controller to use CDOS, and since these disk controllers had an on card serial port such a system would have no need of an Octart style board.

At that time (1980 or thereabouts) printers would usually be of Centronics parallel interface and therefore connected using the Cromemco PRI or equivalent card.

However, the introduction of Cromemco Cromix even in its initial Z80 processor form brought multi-tasking and multi-user.

Multiple users would each have need of an ASCII terminal and a serial connection to the Cromix driven Cromemco computer.

The base level solution to provide addition serial ports would be to use the Cromemco TUART card.

Later this would have been a Cromemco QUADART and IOP series of cards.

Then in the latest generation it was to use a Cromemco OCTART.