Smoke Signal Broadcasting: Hail to the Chieftain

Founded in 1976 as a supplier of plug-in boards for SWTPC's 6800 micro, Smoke Signal Broadcasting is a bit of an obscure entry in the canon of early computing. 

The machine in the advert - The Chieftain - ran a 2MHz Motorola 6800 CPU on an SS-50 bus, one of relatively few non-S-100 architectures around at the time and which was first developed by SWTPC in 1975 for its own 6800-based machines[source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-50_Bus]. 

It also had 32K memory and was probably also the pinnacle of the "computer as furniture", as it claims a "stylish leather-grained cabinet". 

[picture: smokesig_soft_byte_dec78.webp|Smoke Signal Broadcasting also appeared to produce a lot of software for 6800-based machines, calling itself the "Chief" in this field. This is one of eight quarter-page ads which appear on sequential pages in November 1978's Byte - it's for the company's SD-2 6800 BASIC compiler, available for $325, or about [[220|1978]] in [[now]]]

Smoke Signal's machine sold in the US for $2,595 and up, or about [[1730|1978]] in [[now]]. When it reached the UK, the entry-level Chieftain 1 retailed for £1,897 in 1979 (about [[1897|1979]] in [[now]] prices), whereas the Chieftain 3 - as per the model 1 but with twin double-sided 8" floppies - went for £2,846 - a snip at around [[2846|1979]][source: "Hail to the Chieftain!", Personal Computer World, September 1979, p. 90]

