ZTron / Centurion

After the rise and fall of Centurion during EDS's ownership, Centurion was sold back to Bud Smith, who had built a new company called ZTron. Ztron/Centurion was unfortunately short lived, but had a huge lineup planned. The goal was to leverage the MicroPlus name and create a whole suite of different machines to cover individual needs. This never came to be and the only computer built and sold by ZTron/Centurion was the CPU7.

CPU7

The CPU7 system was the only system they successfully built as far as we know. Here are some basic specs on the CPU7 models:

• CPU7 was a Multibus-1 based system
• Multibus 1 allowed the use of third party developed cards including
  • SCSI-I disk controller from InterPhase
  • Buffered intelligent MUX card
• Dual AMD 2903 based CPU
• 4M of Memory
• Off the shelf controllers and backplane
• Switching Power supply

Cruze Computers

ZTron ultimately went bankrupt due to massive litigation from EDS for... reasons. ZTron then sold all Centurion assets to Buddy Cruze, who was a former Centurion dealer and part of the CDCC (Centurion Dealers Computer Corporation). From here, Buddy continued to develop the Centurion system, ultimately producing the CPU9, CPU10 and an x86 port of the software.

CPU9

CPU8 was skipped for marketing reasons as it sounded a little too home computer. The CPU9 featured the following:

• The CPU9 was simple a cleaning up and streamlining the microcode of the CPU7, and represented a 30 to 40 percent increase in speed over the CPU7
  • The CPU7 was designed by an engineering firm in Houston using tools that optimize completing the project expeditiously and not for product performance
• The only real difference in the CPU7 and CPU9 electrically was the bus interface and how memory was accessed
• The OS saw major changes due to a change from 400 byte sectors to 512 byte sectors

We believe that one of these pictured is the CPU9. Other than these ultra low-resolution photos, we don't have any material for the Cruze Computers era machines.

CPU10

After the CPU9 development on the CPU10 started, featuring the following:

• The CPU10 was a 16 bit bit-slice CPU
• Simple instruction prefetching
• Simple data caching.
• Upward Compatible with the CPU7 and CPU8
• Some Instruction set enhancement

We believe that one of these pictured is the CPU10. Other than these ultra low-resolution photos, we don't have any material for the Cruze Computers era machines.

x86 Port

By coincidence, the Centurion instruction set was surprisingly similar to the x86 instruction set, which meant it was possible to essentially port the entire Centurion operating system and application suite over to x86. David Williams and Jim Lemmee were in charge of the port and managed the following:

• All drivers for new PC and Multibus interfaces implemented
• All operating system modules ported to x86
• Integer operations w/wo 80287 implemented
• All CPL, JCL, Supported applications (GL, AP, AR, etc) converted to x86
  • Configurations were:
    • Single PC as Single user
    • PC as multiple users, using 4 port smart multiplexers
    • Multiple users using a network of PCs
    • Multi-bus 1 using the 80286 w/wo the 80287
• Many enhancements to CPL to give it more C functionality

At this point, the hardware side of Centurion was retired completely and no new hardware has been produced since. A version of this port is still in use by two customers of Cruze Computers, now headed up by Byron Williamson.