Gnat Computers

Brochure for the Gnat System 10 (1979)

Gnat Computers was founded in early 1976 and formally incorporated in San Diego, California, in August 1976.[2] Thomas Lafleur was among the company's co-founders.[3] Gnat's first product was the Gnat MC80 (also known as the Gnat 8080 System), a single-board computer.[4] Released in early 1976,[5] the MC80 runs off an Intel 8080 microprocessor and features 256 bytes of RAM, expandable to 512 bytes; the system board also has spots for up to 2 KB worth of programmable ROMs. It was delivered as either bare assembled circuit boards or with an optional chassis containing a front panel for input and maintenance. Gnat recommended their MC80 for industrial process applications.[6] To this end, they also sold a communications-control expansion board, which hooks up to the main board via a socket-and-ribbon-cable arrangement.[7]

In mid-1976, the company delivered pre-assembled hardware multiply–divide operator modules for several other early 8080-based microcomputers, including the Altair 8800 and Intel's MDS and Intellec 8 Mod 80, as well as for their own MC80.[8] Each module was available in a 2.5-µs and 5-µs variant, the latter being $50 cheaper.[9] The Southern California Computer Society measured Gnat's 2.5µs modules as performing multiplication and division between 100 and 160 times faster than common software approaches for such arithmetic at the time; in fact, they said the modules were so fast that they completed their operations quicker than the 8080 microprocessor can access the result.[5]

Gnat released the first of their 8080-based Gnat-Pac family of microcomputers in 1977, starting with the System 8.[10] The System 8 featured optional[11] built-in dual 5.25-inch floppy disk drives capable of writing 80-KB-formatted disks. The computer featured 16 KB of RAM, eight PROM modules (one 2-KB PROM included, featuring the bootstrap loader and memory monitor), serial and parallel I/O ports.[10] Gnat followed up with the Gnat-Pac System 9 in 1978, which bumped the floppy disk capacity to 500 KB, expandable to 1 MB.[12] The computer came shipped with a disk operating system,[13] CP/M. Gnat was one of the first companies to license CP/M for a microcomputer, the purchase mediated between developer Digital Research and Gnat's Lafleur. Lafleur managed to secure perpetual rights to use the operating system for a bargain $90 in 1977. Within the year, the price of a corporate CP/M license had skyrocketed to tens of thousands of dollars.[3]

In 1979, Gnat teamed up with Data Technology Industries (DTI) of San Leandro, California, to develop the Gnat System 10, an all-in-one microcomputer based on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor.[14] The System 10 featured 65 KB of RAM; a built-in CRT supported by a video card that could output 80-column-by-25-row text; two 700-KB 5.25-inch floppy drives; a Selectric-style keyboard; and a hard drive interface.[15] The company sold 2,000 units of the System 10 between 1979 and 1980.[14] In 1981 Gnat signed an agreement with the Maryland-based American Peripheral Systems to supply the latter with $12 million of Gnat's microcomputers in exchange for dealership representation in 20 states and Washington, D.C., over a five-year contract.[1]

DTI acquired Gnat in 1983 and continued selling the System 10 into the mid-1980s. The company subsumed Gnat's computer manufacturing, rebranding the System 10 as "The Associate".[14]