Hacker Friendly S-100 and SS-50 Bus Machines Early on, since the 1st generation microcomputers were primarily the domain of tinkerers, a couple of interface standards emerged in the system bus area, mainly the S-100 and the SS-50 bus. The S-100 was the 100 pin data bus used in machines such as the Altari 8800 and others, while the SS-50 bus was used in machines made by SWTPc, Smoke Signal Broadcasting, and GIMIX. The S-100 machines tended to use the Intel 8080 or similar CPU, while the SS-50 bus machines tended to use the Motorolla 6800, and later, the 6809 CPU. Both designs lasted into the early 1980's, though the S-100 bus is the better known of the two.

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