Discussion on:

One of the 4 Seals 8k static RAM cards (Inside the Altair 8800 vintage computer)

In West Liberty, Iowa a company called Digital Sports Systems built the next step up from the Altair. It had the Zilog Z80 8 bit CPU with the S100 bus. It used 4k dynamic rams and could address 64k of memory. The system supported 2 floppy disk drives - 32 hard sectored disks that held 300k bytes each. I automated my auto parts stores billing with them. Peachtree accounting written in basic with microsoft's ISAM - indexed sequential access management - handled the data files. The OS was CPM - comtrol program for microcomputer by Digital Research. This was the OS that MS emulated for IBM when they wrote PC-DOS. At the time we did not realize that MS writing the DOS for IBM would make Bill G the richest man on earth even though he had to brake a few restraint of trade laws to do it. One is not going to go from nothing to multibillion by just being competive. At least now he is giving some of it away for good causes.

I noticed the first listing called the Altair the first personal computer. We didn't learn the term 'personal computer' until several years later when IBM used it to differentiate the micro based computers from their real computers. Until the 16bit world it was microcomputer.

I have a working exidy sorcerer that I got in 1979 at the time of the TRS boom

Before Star Trek ever came along Leslie Nielsen, Anne Francisand Walter Pigeon were walking on the desert of Altair 4. Who took what from who?

Yes, Forbidden Planet! The power of the mind in harnessing the power of the machine!

Danger, Danger, Danger!

And yes, while taking nothing from Star Trek, this is where the path to Altair began. (and that Anne Francis AKA "Altaira " WOW, WOW, WOW! Put this young teen in cartiac arrest in 1956

Don't foget Robbie the Robot. He was on Altair, The Forbidden Planet too.

what, exactly, did they use the Altair 8800 for? what did it do? I've never been able to figure that out from reading about it.

(I KNOW several people are going to just ROLL their eyes when they see this question, but What los Heck!)

I recall asking the same questions myself in the Lab, no one was able to answer what we might expect to be a business / function oriented answer in this era because all of them was busy for a long time flipping those toggle switches, watching if the instruction was accepted, with doubts of course, and flipping more toggle switches to read/interprest the results on tiny red led's.

What I saw as the real use of microcomputers for businesses, began with the arrival of CPM OS /Control Program for Microcomputers but it did not last long because of the arrival of PC-DOS.

PBS has a documentary on this Personal Computing Evolution, interesting to watch.

Have to go, I have a DEC PDP/11, DATA GENERAL NOVA 3 and DATA GENERAL ECLIPSE mini-computer to salvage for history.

In the mid 70.s I was up in the roof elevator house of a building in downtown Phoenix, and was told the ALTAIR blinking away there was used to control the building environment. I noticed it because I had an IMSAI box running CPM, and Peachtree accounting.

In the mid 70's I programmed and operated a computer controlled milling machine. It used a Altair 8800 as the controller. The company was to cheap to invest in battery backup (quite expensive then) for the controller and evey time lightning took out the power (several times each summer) I had to manually reload the boot. I had to manually enter the bootloader with the fron panel switches so it could recognise the paper tape reader to load the operating system and then the program tape. Quite time consuming but fun for a young kid who loved being the tech whiz.

It took a little while to obtain all of the hardware we needed but with the basic Altair, a Soroc terminal, Dual 8" floppy (one for program the other for data), a DecWriter printer and Altair Basic I build an Inventory, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Invoicing, General Ledger system and ran my Theatrical Supply and contracting business on it. When TCS wrote the precursor to Peachtree Accounting offered an interpretive Basic accounting package we traded their code for ours and kept going. I still have the Altair although I'm not brave enough to try to run it. I also still have the 8" Floppy Distribution copy of Microsoft Basic with the hand typed label.

I still have mine too. Built it from scratch -- both the computer and the floppy disk drive. Only had 8k of memory. Someday I'll fire it up. I to wrote an accounting system using the Altair. I also wrote a work processor complete with spelling checker. Those were cool days. Don't want to go back there, but it was fun. You haven't lived until you align a floppy disk drive the way we did then -- with a hammer -- really -- those were the instructions!

Most computers during this time were focused on accounting. What I think you are missing is that there actually was a monitor and keyboard as well.

CPM Rocked. Well till you ran out of memory using SuperCalc.

In 75~76 I worked for a physical chemist who had one. It controlled a stepper motor that posisitoned a reflector to tune a cavity.

A couple of years later I worked with a Nova (Data General) that was like a deluxe 16 bit version of the Altair. Core memory boards as big as a pizza.

The only problem I found with the article is that it made me feel old as I was in the computer industry when the Altair 8800 was first introduced, and even repaired some of them through pot the years.

You have great articles keep up the great work.

Gary King

I ordered a kit before I even finished the article in the Jan 1975 Popular Electronics magazine. I did get it working (and still have the unit, although a couple of switches have gotten broken over the years). The only boards I have for it are the CPU, a 1K (!) RAM board (8 2101's) and the third Hayes 80-103A modem ever made (I wrote the first software for any Hayes products). I later upgraded to an IMSAI 8080 (much better design), but got my start with the Altair. I still have a full set of MITS newsletters, too. Seems so long ago now. One of these recently was sold for $3000 at an ANTIQUE auction in Koln, Germany. BTW, the Mark 8 predated the Altair, but few folks ever got that one running. Kudos to Ed Roberts for making the first SUCCESSFUL home computer. This was WAY before the Apple I (all they invented was the home computer ad campaign).

I hand built a 8080 for our base system.
It took hours to wire all of the s100 bus connections. We ran peachtree software and
printer test programs that my boss Tim of
Staus Business Systems wrote. It had to be
hand booted to a pair of Microplis floppy's.
We used it for a long time. I still have it
but have lost the boot floppy.

I had one of the 8080s that was featured in, I think, Popular Mechanics (before Popular Electronics?) It cost me nearly a thousand dollars and nearly my marriage when she found out how much I spent on the kit. 4K of ram and programmed through the dip switches on the front in binary.

An enthusiast is now producing a reproduction of both the Altair 8800 and Altair 680 computer kits. You can find out more at http://www.altairkit.com/.

I have no relationship with this person, nor have I purchased one of his kits. My original Altair 8800 from 1975 is still working fine.

Kaypro4

I think you need an asr33 teletype with paper tape reader/punch to go with that setup!

How old are you people?

Started on the Altair 8800 in 1976 SFU Burnaby BC