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TecMar --  History

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TecMar was founded by a Dr. Martin Alpert in Cleveland, Ohio in 1974.  The name "Tecmar" being derived from MARty's TEChnology.  The company was formed to manufacture pulmonary medical equipment which Alpert designed while he was a medical student.  The initial products were scientific data acquisition products used in the medical industry, but the company soon fount there was a market for the products in multiple diverse industries.  

Soon after starting the company Alpert initially came up with a new idea in the pulmonary area that was microprocessor based.  As part of the development of the medical product, he needed certain components that weren't available for microprocessors, specifically analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters.  He developed them in a general sense so they could be used in Tecmar's medical products but also offer them to the general market.

As we know this was the time the S-100 bus started to appear and Alpert saw the utility of putting his designs of S-100 boards.  This was Tecmar's more or less specific contribution to S-100 boards. While they did briefly advertise a complete 8086 based S-100 based system running MP/M-86 later in 1981, I'm not sure it was ever delivered in reasonable numbers.  A review of this system was written up by Chris Terry in the July 1981 issue of Microsystems (Vol 2, #4, p18) and can be obtained here.

Instead the company went on to developing IBM-PC "add on" board for a number of years - some quite successfully.  In 1986 they were acquired by a technology holding company called Rexon and over the next 20 years went through a number of changes and re-acquisitions to essentially all but disappear today.

 

Other TecMar  S-100 Boards
Digital to Analogue Converter     Analogue to Digital Converter         8086 CPU Board

This page was last modified on 10/25/2013