The Intertec Superbrain was an all-in-one commercial microcomputer

Microcomputer

A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. They are physically small compared to mainframe and minicomputers...

 first sold by Intertec in 1979. The machine ran the operating system CP/M

CP/M

CP/M was a mass-market operating system created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc...

 and was somewhat unusual in that it used dual Z80 CPUs, the second being used as a disk controller. In 1983, the basic machine sold for about $2000.

There were several variants, including the Superbrain II, Superbrain II Jr., "QD" (quad density disk drives) and "SD" (super density) models.

The Superbrain is notable for being at the user end of the first Kermit

Kermit (protocol)

Kermit is a computer file transfer/management protocol and a set of communications software tools primarily used in the early years of personal computing in the 1980s; it provides a consistent approach to file transfer, terminal emulation, script programming, and character set conversion across...

connection in 1981.

The machine was practical and useful in the office environment, but somewhat limiting until the arrival of the first 5MB hard disks in one of the floppy drive bays. This was soon replaced by the 10MB Winchester thus effectively removing all limitations on what could be programmed and stored.

Specifications

Model Number	Processor	Disk Drives	Clock Speed
10 (Compustar)	Z80	No drives network device	4 MHz
Jr	Z80	170Kb	4 MHz
QD (Quad Density)	Z80	340Kb	4 MHz
SD	Z80	780Kb	4 MHz

Peripherals

• DSS-10 10Mb Hard Disk
• CDC 96Mb Hard Disk with removable platter
• Priam 14" 144mb Hard Disk

External links

• http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/supbrain/index.htm
• Superbrain at Old Computer Museum
• Marcus Bennett's Superbrain documentation