Lesson plan

Intertec Superbrain

The Intertec SuperBrain was an all-in-one commercial microcomputer that was first sold by Intertec Data Systems Corporation of Columbia, South Carolina, USA in 1979. The machine ran the operating system CP/M and was somewhat unusual in that it used dual Z80 CPUs, the second being used as a disk controller. In 1981, it sold with 64K of RAM for $2649 ($9368 in 2025 USD) and the QD model was $3195 (approximately $11,300 in 2025 USD). In 1983, the basic machine sold for about . There were several variants, including the SuperBrain II (released in 1982), SuperBrain II Jr., "QD" (quad-density disk drives) and "SD" (super density) models. Intertec also released a similar looking dumb terminal, the Intertube, and smart terminal, the Emulator. The SuperBrain is notable for being at the user end of the first Kermit connection in 1981. The machine was practical and useful in the office environment, but somewhat limited until the arrival of the first 5 MB hard drive in one of the floppy drive bays. This was soon replaced by the 10 MB hard drive. Up to 255 CompuStar workstations could be daisy-chained together via DC-37 "Chaining Adaptor" parallel ports to share the "central disk system" (one of the three hard drive peripheral options below). Each computer, or VPU (Video Processing Unit), was assigned a unique number from 1 to 255 by setting an eight-position DIP switch.…

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Article summary

The Intertec SuperBrain was an all-in-one commercial microcomputer that was first sold by Intertec Data Systems Corporation of Columbia, South Carolina, USA in 1979. The machine ran the operating system CP/M and was somewhat unusual in that it used dual Z80 CPUs, the second being used as a disk controller. In 1981, it sold with 64K of RAM for $2649 ($9368 in 2025 USD) and the QD model was $3195 (approximately $11,300 in 2025 USD). In 1983, the basic machine sold for about . There were several variants, including the SuperBrain II (released in 1982), SuperBrain II Jr., "QD" (quad-density disk drives) and "SD" (super density) models. Intertec also released a similar looking dumb terminal, the Intertube, and smart terminal, the Emulator. The SuperBrain is notable for being at the user end of the first Kermit connection in 1981. The machine was practical and useful in the office environment, but somewhat limited until the arrival of the first 5 MB hard drive in one of the floppy drive bays. This was soon replaced by the 10 MB hard drive. Up to 255 CompuStar workstations could be daisy-chained together via DC-37 "Chaining Adaptor" parallel ports to share the "central disk system" (one of the three hard drive peripheral options below). Each computer, or VPU (Video Processing Unit), was assigned a unique number from 1 to 255 by setting an eight-position DIP switch.…

Key claims

  1. release date: 1982 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. The record states that the release date is "1982". What evidence would count against this claim?
  3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

  1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1376283800

Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.