Southwest Technical Products Corporation (SWTPC) was formed way back in 1964 by Daniel Meyer and for many years sold electronic kits promoted mostly by Popular Electronics magazine.  They had a special relationship with Don Lancaster, whose kits were quite often published in the Magazine.  SWTPC were probably mostly known in the early 70s for their Tiger Amplifiers, which were a high standard for the day.  When the Altair computer debuted in early 1975, SWTPC quickly released their own personal computer with their own 6800 computer being released later that same year.

Soon after Motorola released the powerful 6809 CPU in 1978, SWTPC created a new computer to use it. This particular 6809 model used an MP-B3 motherboard which supported 56k of memory and included a set of fifty parallel traces to carry the signals of their custom SS-50 bus (S-100 was the standard at the time), and another set of thirty for the SS-30 I/O bus. There are only a few IC’s on the motherboard, mostly just the male Molex connectors onto which the computer add-on boards would plug in. The outward case design is almost identical to that of the earlier 6800 model machines and used textured, black sheet metal for the cover.

The serial number of my unit is 6601. The computer came in two flavors, the 69K (Computer Kit ) and the unit I own: the 69A which was pre-assembled and cost $695.  Later, SWTPC released updated models for the 6809 computers that expanded its capabilities greatly.