The Digital Group 

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The Digital Group was a Denver Colorado based company founded in August of 1974 by Dr. Robert Suding and Dick Bemis to sell microcomputers designed by Suding. DG computers were among the most advanced microcomputer systems available at the time. They offered users a choice of CPU's that enabled upgrading or swapping processors to run software written for any of the four most popular processors available: The Zilog Z80, The Intel 8080, the Motorola 6800, and the 6500 series from MOS Technology. DG computers included video, cassette tape, and keyboard interface standard with every system, as well as a simple operating system on tape geared towards programmers. The Z80 and 8080 systems also included several demonstration programs. Notably, The Digital Group Z80 was the first computer to use the still very popular Z80 microprocessor chip. 

Digital Group computers were designed to be more user friendly than other computers available at the time. Loading software on an audio based system was as simple as pressing play on a cassette tape player and then the reset button on the system to load a selected application or operating system. Disk system (Diskmon) or data tape system (Phimon) startup was as simple as pressing the reset button, and requesting the desired application by name with the keyboard.

The software applications available were numerous, and varied from business applications to hobby and gaming. The popularity of the DG platform was such that programmers were eager to write applications for it, and the standardization of the hardware allowed for an immediate and large potential customer base. 

Popular until the very end, Digital Group failed in August of 1979 due to management and parts supplier troubles, not a lack of customer interest or product orders. Co-founder Dr. Robert Suding recalled that at the time of the bankruptcy, DG had thousands of product information requests and orders waiting to be filled.

This was the "Cadillac of computers". In 1975, when this system was introduced, Altair system owners were flipping switches for hours just to watch lights blink on the front panel of their systems. Digital Group system owners were throwing a power switch and loading an operating system in less than 20 seconds. The cassette interface, standard with DG systems, loaded programs at 1100 baud. At the time, this was nearly four times the speed possible with any other manufacturers tape systems, and ten times faster than paper tape -- the only method available at the time for loading Micro Soft BASIC onto the Altair system. Of course, to even do that on an Altair, you had to buy a paper tape reader and an interface. Usually an ASR-33 Teletype and an SIO card. ($$$) By contrast, Digital Group systems included a video and cassette interface and a keyboard as standard equipment with all of their systems.