Around 1978 the Dutch company of Ritro Electronics offered the
AMICOS computer as a kit for home-builders. The AMICOS was based on
the S6800 chip of American Microsystems (similar to the Motorola
6800 processor), and used a modular design using Eurocards in conjunction with the Eurobus-64 backplane. Optionally, a Z-80 processor could be used instead of the 6800. Separate
cards could be built or purchased for parallel I/O, 8K static RAM, 8K EPROM,
interfaces for audiocassette, teletype, keyboard, video display,
and others. An editor/assembler and a BASIC interpreter were
available on EPROM. The control panel gave direct access to
processor and memory via the then usual arrangement of data and
address switches and corresponding indicator lights.
Top: AMICOS built (and, sad to say, taken apart) by the author (EHD).
Bottom: From a review of the AMICOS in the Dutch periodical "Radio Bulletin", September 1980.
The AMICOS computer in our collection was built by Pieter Wolters (Ermelo, NL), who donated the machine and its documentation to the Computer Museum in 2004.
