The Zapple Monitor was a firmware-based product developed by Roger Amidon (Bio (pdf)) at Technical Design Laboratories (also known as TDL). TDL was based in Princeton, New Jersey, USA in the 1970s and early 1980s.
The Zapple monitor supplied basic input/output services (BIOS) for S-100-based Z-80 computer systems such as the classic Altair and IMSAI S-100 systems.
Pre-dating floppy interfaces and other more familiar mass-storage devices for personal computers, the Zapple multifunction card hosting the firmware monitor included an RS-232 serial interface along with a cassette tape based hardware interface seemingly optimized for a particular portable Sanyo tape deck that many S-100 aficionados at the time held to be the standard of reliability.
Famous quotes containing the word monitor:
“It is indeed typical that you Earth people refuse to believe in the superiority of any world but your own. Children looking into a magnifying glass, imagining the image you see is the image of your true size.”
—Franklin Coen. Joseph Newman. The Monitor (Douglas Spencer)