Ithaca Intersystems was a microcomputer manufacturer in the 1970s and 1980s, located in

Ithaca, New York Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York (state), New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County, New York, Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca m ...

. The early years drew on engineering talent from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to ...

when the founders, including Steven Edelman, worked in a small rented space in the Collegtown neighborhood adjacent to the university campus in 1976. They initially produced the Ithaca Intersystems DPS-1

S-100 bus The S-100 bus or Altair bus, IEEE 696-1983 ''(withdrawn)'', is an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800. The bus was the first industry standard expansion bus for the microcomputer industry. computers, consisting of ...

Z80 The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples were ...

-based computer. As a large commercial success, the company moved to larger spaces outside of town, and designed and produced a larger system, the

Zilog Zilog, Inc. is an American manufacturer of microprocessors and 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers. It is also a supplier of application-specific embedded system-on-chip (SoC) products. Its most famous product is the Z80 series of 8-bit microp ...

Z8002-based DPS-8000. This used the

Coherent Coherence, coherency, or coherent may refer to the following: Physics * Coherence (physics), an ideal property of waves that enables stationary (i.e. temporally and spatially constant) interference * Coherence (units of measurement), a deriv ...

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

operating system from

Mark Williams Company The Mark Williams Company was a small software company in Chicago, Illinois (later moved to Northbrook, Illinois) that created Coherent, one of the first Unix-like operating systems for IBM PCs and several C programming language compilers. It was ...

. The company languished in the 1980s, not being part of the

domination Domination or dominant may refer to: Society * World domination, which is mainly a conspiracy theory * Colonialism in which one group (usually a nation) invades another region for material gain or to eliminate competition * Chauvinism in which a ...

of the

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a tea ...

and PC clones. The company closed in 1986 and was shortly thereafter rechristened as an audio company, Ithaca Audio. They had an important role in the finalisation of the S-100 IEEE-696 Standard for S-100 ef to be addedand worked closely with Digicomp Research in Terrace Hill, who also drew from Cornell Engineering. The Pascal-Z compiler was supplied with a DPS-1 front panel and an Ithaca S-100 box.

References

External links

Marcus Bennett's InterSystems Datastore

old-computer.com page on the DPS-1

YouTube video of a working Ithaca InterSystems DPS-1
{{computer-hardware-stub American companies established in 1976 American companies disestablished in 1986 Computer companies established in 1976 Computer companies disestablished in 1986 Defunct computer companies of the United States Ithaca, New York Defunct companies based in New York (state) Defunct manufacturing companies based in New York (state)