According to Damer, what made this computer, which he has nicknamed "the Sac State 8008," special was that it was far more sophisticated, even in 1972, than was the Altair 8800 when it was released in 1975. In particular, he noted, the Sacramento State computer had the operating system and the assembly language--in this case, IBM's Basic Assembly Language (BAL). To be sure, the external components were not built for the computer. Rather, Damer explained, the Sacramento State team pulled them off of a mainframe. Still, the peripherals, such as the hard drive--a Memorex with 3 Megabyte platters--worked with the machine. "There wasn't a microcomputer equivalent (to this)," Damer said, "until the late 1970s or early 1980s."

Interesting ...