Hot on the heals of the 8080-based Altair was Southwest Technical Products Corporation (SWTP) and their 6800-based computer. And just like MITS getting on the cover of Popular Electronics, SWTP got theirs on, too. (Yes, I still have my copies of both along with my year one and two issues of Byte. Damn, I’m old!)

Based in San Antonio, TX and started by Dan Meyer in the mid-60′s to sell kits of projects he wrote about in Popular Electronics and Radio Electronics, he also sold kits based on articles written by the ever prolific Don Lancaster and others.

Yes, Uncle Dave cut his electronics teeth on kits from SWTP. The first complete project I built was their Theramin in 1967. Over the following years, I built several of the audio amps, the preamp and one of the bench power supplies.

Here’s a scan of the about page from the first catalog I got from them in, I believe, 1967. The catalog was black and white on plain paper. And here’s my copy of what is either the January or June (based on the mailing label) ’76 catalog.

Here’s a guy who was even more into them than me with lots of info and scans of catalogs, some of which I still have. And surprise surprise, there’s a pretty good Wikipedia entry on the company.