Ampro

History

Ampro was started in 1983 in Mountain View, California, by Rick Lehrbaum and David Feldman, who had previously worked together at Telesensory Systems, a company making assistive devices for people who are blind or have low vision. The idea came when Feldman heard from someone selling used microcomputer systems for under $1000 each. Believing there was a market for low-cost microcomputers, they put up their own money to launch the company. Lehrbaum became vice president of engineering, handling most hardware design, while Feldman served as president and chairman, managing sales and finances.

Their first product was the Little Board, a compact single-board computer built around a Zilog Z80A processor. It included all the chips needed to run CP/M from ROM, so customers just had to supply a power source, floppy drives, and a terminal. Later, they put this board into a cube-shaped case measuring 6.5 by 7 inches, calling it the Ampro Bookshelf Series 100, which came with two 5.25-inch floppy drives. The Little Board was first advertised in the back of Byte magazine and, according to Lehrbaum, “took off like a rocket.”

By the mid-1980s, the Apple II and IBM PC were dominating the personal computer market, so Ampro realized they couldn’t keep selling complete systems. They shifted focus to making single-board computers for embedded systems. In October 1985, they released the Little Board/186, which used an Intel 80186 processor and was roughly compatible with IBM PC software, though it couldn’t handle programs that wrote to video memory—output was only ASCII text through a remote terminal.

It also had a built-in SCSI host adapter for networking over the SCSI bus. Later versions came with Intel 80286 and 80386 processors, improving compatibility with IBM PC AT software and 386-based clones. Ampro also created a line of mezzanine boards called MiniModule, which plugged into the main board to add features like graphics and modem support, making them fully equivalent to full-sized IBM PC compatibles. In January 1989, Ampro launched the Embedded UNIX Platform, the first embedded system to run Unix from ROM, targeting the telecom, computer networking, and government sectors, where Unix was widely used.