While serving at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, Ed Roberts and Forrest M. Mims III decided to use their electronics background to produce small kits for model rocket hobbyists. They needed to sell additional memory boards, I/O boards and other options to make a profit. A deal on power supplies led to the use of +8V and +18V,[citation needed] which had to be locally regulated on the cards to TTL (+5V) or RS-232 (+12V) standard voltage levels. Bill continued programming and started little business ventures until January 1975 when this magazine appeared on the stands: On the cover is an Altair 8800 computer. The IMSAI advantage was short lived because MITS had recognized these shortcomings and developed the Altair 8800B which was introduced in June 1976. The simplicity and abundant documentation of the Altair makes it an appealing system for learning assembly programming. [9] The MITS 816 calculator kit used the chipset and was featured on the November 1971 cover of Popular Electronics. But they're rare. If you can write even the simplest of programs on an Altair, then you have a level of insight into how computers really work that puts you in an elite echelon. ~ Emulator of Altair 8800 Computer In 1999, I (Rich Cini) downloaded a copy of a MITS Altair emulator program written for the Windows platform by Claus Giloi. The advantage of the Altair-Duino is that it includes all the components and a custom printed circuit board. Front Panel Programming – Interrupt Processing, Front Panel Programming – Serial I/O Echo Routines, Loading and Operating Altair 4K BASIC with a Teletype, Loading Altair 8K BASIC from Cassette Tape, MITS Programming Package II – Introduction, MITS Programming Package II – Programming, MITS Programming Package II – Loading and Saving Programs, CP/M 3 Part 4 - Programming Environment #1, Altair Clone Playing Music on an AM Radio. Altair BASIC was very expensive at $500, but only $75 when purchased with an Altair computer, an interface board, and 8K of memory. The typical MITS product had a generic name like the "Model 1440 Calculator" or the "Model 1600 Digital Voltmeter". share | improve this question | follow | edited Sep 1 '19 at 23:11. cjs. It must have been really expensive – note the ‘Save Over $1000’ line. Posted by 3 years ago. You could run thousands of CP/M software titles (CP/M was the de facto standard operating system before MS-DOS.) Electronic Arrays had just announced a set of six large scale integrated (LSI) circuit chips that would make a four-function calculator. It must have been really expensive – note the ‘Save Over $1000’ line. Altair: The Altair was the world's first personal computer ( PC ) to attract a substantial number of users. Buy It … Notwithstanding the language's use on several minicomputers, it was the introduction of the MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer in 1975 that provided BASIC a path to universality. Some salesmen said that MITS was getting cosmetic rejects or otherwise inferior chips. In 1977, Pertec Computer Corporation purchased MITS and began to market the computer, without changes (except for branding), as the PCC 8800 in 1978.[35]. It was Microsoft's first product (as Micro-Soft), distributed by MITS under a contract. The TV Typewriter and the Mark-8 computer projects were just a detailed set of plans and a set of bare printed circuit boards. The BASIC language was announced in July 1975 and it required one or two 4096 word memory boards and an interface board. Altair 8800 Clone. Teach and reinfor… It is a great way to add a comment | 1 Answer Active Oldest Votes. The basic machine consisted of five cards, including the CPU on one and memory on another. Original Altair Basic was actually written by Bill Gates, about the time Microsoft was created. When it appeared on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics , the Altair 8800 ignited the (still accelerating) personal computer boom. "[20] Ed Roberts had experience in buying OEM quantities of calculator chips and he was able to negotiate a $75 price (about $350 in 2014 dollars) for the 8080 microprocessor chips. Programming the Altair via the front panel could be a tedious and time-consuming process. Though the article's description of the programming task is essentially correct (flipping switches to input the binary opcodes), the description of the output isn't quite spot-on. Ed Roberts received a letter from Traf-O-Data asking if he would be interested in buying its BASIC programming language for the machine. MITS had no competition in the US for the first half of 1975. Altair was the first home computer kit (well, first popular one anyway). Buy It Now. In 1972 and 1973, some of the best construction projects appeared in Radio-Electronics. $199.99. The Altair 8800 was, to its creators, a surprise hit. The front panel switches were used to load in the program. (Fun video compilation) Other. Calculators and video games like Pong introduced computer power to the general public. Close. A distinguishing feature of the Altair and IMSAI computers is their primary user interface - the front panel covered in LEDs and switches. As I mentioned, toggle switches are connected directly to the raw, unbuffered 8080 data bus. Don Lancaster did an ASCII keyboard for Popular Electronics in April 1974. In fact, a fully loaded Altair 8800 was a usable and functional computer well into the mid-80’s. He thought the Intel 4004 and Intel 8008 were not powerful enough (in fact several microcomputers based on Intel chips were already on the market: the Canadian company Microsystems International's CPS-1 built-in 1972 used a MIL MF7114 chip modeled on the 4004, the Micral marketed in January 1973 by the French company R2E and the MCM/70 marketed in 1974 by the Canadian company Micro Computer Machines); the National Semiconductor IMP-8 and IMP-16 required external hardware; the Motorola 6800 was still in development. Electronics hobbyists were moving on to digital projects such as digital voltmeters and frequency counters. Gates soon joined Allen and formed Microsoft, then spelled "Micro-Soft". In fact, a fully loaded Altair 8800 was a usable and functional computer well into the mid-80’s. The Altair 8800 Clone can be used for a number of excellent demonstrations for topics including the history of computing, intro to operating systems, microprocessor basics, number systems, etc. Altair BASIC was the start of the Microsoft BASIC product range. Pre-Owned. The LEDs of the Altair are connected directly to the address bus and data bus. [3][4] The Altair is widely recognized as the spark that ignited the microcomputer revolution[5] as the first commercially successful personal computer. The very first Altair users would actually load code via the front panel switches, one byte at a time. No particular level of thought went into the design, which led to such disasters as shorting from various power lines of differing voltages being located next to each other. Solomon already had a number of pictures of the machine and the article was based on them. For a long time I have thought it would be cool to have an Altair 8800 computer to play around with. But working vintage Altairs are rare and therefore expensive, easily costing $1500-$2500 if available at all. When the 8080 was introduced in April 1974, Intel set the single unit price at $360 (About $1,700 in 2014 dollars). If you can write even the simplest of programs on an Altair, then you have a level of insight into how computers really work that puts you in an elite echelon. If we want to read the input from the sense switch, the input buffer must be switched off. This calculator kit sold for $175 ($275 assembled). In January 1972, Popular Electronics merged with another Ziff-Davis magazine, Electronics World. 17k 2 2 gold badges 37 37 silver badges 104 104 bronze badges. It ran on the MITS Altair 8800 and subsequent S-100 bus computers. Popular Electronics featured the MITS Altair 8800 microcomputer kit in January 1975. Unlike a real Altair 8800 it features several enhancements: Choice of processor (8080 CPU, Z80 CPU or 8086 CPU) Optional banked memory (16 banks with 64 Kbyte) MMU supporting ROM and memory mapped I/O The Altair 8800, was first featured ... Bill Gates and Paul Allen saw an opportunity and wrote Altair BASIC, a true programming language. When they called Roberts to follow up on the letter he expressed his interest, and the two started work on their BASIC interpreter using a self-made simulator for the 8080 on a PDP-10 minicomputer. Recently I started reading a biography of Bill Gates (ISBN-10: 0385420757), which starts in the early days of widely available computing. If you combine the Altair 8800 with a standard ASCII video terminal and keyboard, and add a disk drive, it became a very powerful and useful computer system (especially for 1975!) It had a 14-digit display, memory, and square root function. In 1974, Art Salsberg became editor of Popular Electronics. A number of Altair programs are included and can easily be loaded into the emulator, including Pong, Altair 4K BASIC (the first Microsoft product), Altair extended BASIC, MITS Programming System II (Due only), Altair Time Sharing BASIC (allows multiple users to use BASIC at the same time). To keep up with the demand, MITS moved into a larger building at 6328 Linn NE in Albuquerque in 1973. The computer has 78 machine language instructions and is capable of performing several important operations not normally available with conventional mini computers. A distinguishing feature of the Altair and IMSAI computers is their primary user interface - the front panel covered in LEDs and switches. How is the Altair 8800 related to the computer giants Intel and Microsoft? Programming required the toggling of the switches to positions corresponding to the desired 8080 microprocessor instruction or opcode in binary, then used the 'DEPOSIT NEXT' switch to load that instruction into the next address of the machine's memory. The Altair had enough power to be actually useful, and was designed as an expandable system that opened it up to all sorts of applications. $189.00. Feel free to contact us with your suggestions It became the first-ever commercially successful personal computer, especially compared to the first microprocessor-based personal computer – Micral. Figure 2.1: Altair 8800. The computer trainer was put on hold and the editors looked for a real computer system. In July 1975, Intel sent a letter to its sales force stating that the MITS Altair 8800 computer used standard Intel 8080 parts. or Best Offer. The Altair 8800 simulator is part of the SIMH family of simulators currently at version 3.8-1. The Altair Partner Alliance (APA) delivers broader access to an extended range of software solutions, using your existing Altair Units at no additional cost. MITS Price List, Popular Electronics, August 1975.[32]. In February MITS received 1,000 orders for the Altair 8800. The system came with a "1024 word" (1024 byte) memory board populated with 256 bytes. In addition to calculators, MITS made a line of test equipment kits. He was impressed with Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter (Radio Electronics, September 1973) article and wanted computer projects for Popular Electronics. MITS claimed to have delivered 2,500 Altair 8800s by the end of May. Despite looking nothing like what we would today consider to be a computer, it sold thousands of units … Archived . Unlike a real Altair 8800 it features several enhancements: Choice of processor (8080 CPU, Z80 CPU or 8086 CPU) Optional banked memory (16 banks with 64 Kbyte) MMU supporting ROM and memory mapped I/O The computer has 78 machine language instructions and is capable of performing several important operations not normally available with conventional mini computers. The Altair-Duino is based on an Altair 8800 emulator project published on hackster.io by David Hansel using the Arduino Due and Arduino Mega 2560, which you can, of course, replicate from scratch. The front panel, which was inspired by the Data General Nova minicomputer, included a large number of toggle switches to feed binary data directly into the memory of the machine, and a number of red LEDs to read those values back out.[36]. $39.99. 4. "That figure had a nice ring to it," recalled Intel's Dave House in 1984. Ed Roberts was busy finishing the design and left the naming of the computer to the editors of Popular Electronics. The Altair 8800 from Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems (MITS) of Albuquerque, NM, is considered by many to be the first "personal computer" - a computer that is easily affordable and obtainable. Please dont just include a link. (Fun video compilation) Other. The game Lunar Lander was entered in and this worked as well. The Altair 8800 simulator is part of the SIMH family of simulators. )[14], One of the editors, Les Solomon, knew MITS was working on an Intel 8080 based computer project and thought Roberts could provide the project for the always popular January issue. He called the company and reached a private home, where no one had heard of anything like BASIC. 1 Answer. 7 x 17 x 17.5 in. So he chose the 8-bit Intel 8080. Favorite Answer. Initially the programming the Altair was an extremely tedious process, as a keyboard wasn't provided. Nevertheless, many were sold in this form. [33] His company was Processor Technology, one of the most successful Altair compatible board suppliers. Watch; Popular Electronics Magazine - February, 1975 ~~ Altair 8800 Computer Part 2. However, the hands-on learning experience that the Altair Clone can provide in a lab series can be especially valuable. [10] Forrest Mims wrote the assembly manual for this kit and many others over the next several years. [citation needed] Another oddity was that the system included two unidirectional 8-bit data buses, when the normal practice was for a single bidirectional bus (this oddity did, however, allow a later expansion of the S-100 standard to 16 bits bidirectional by using both 8-bit buses in parallel). It has 16 address switches, of which 8 can also be used as data entry switches and the other 8 as 'sense' switches for giving user input to a running program. It was functionally similar to the Altair 8800 but it was a commercial grade system with a wide selection of peripherals and development software. Their advertisement in the July 1975 issue of Popular Electronics promised interface and PROM boards in addition to the 4K memory board. An enterprising Altair owner, Robert Marsh, designed a 4K static memory that was plug-in compatible with the Altair 8800 and sold for $255. January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics was published on November 29, 1974. The Altair is widely recognized as the spark that ignited the microcomputer revolution as the first commercially successful personal computer. Most programming languages required more memory (and/or disk space) than were available on the small computers most users could afford. CRC Press, 2004. These included an IC tester, a waveform generator, a digital voltmeter, and several other instruments. Home Details Who Needs One? The model rocket kits were a modest success and MITS wanted to try a kit that would appeal to more hobbyists. TIL how to program an Altair 8800, and subsequently why Bill Gates' Altair basic was such a game changer. Created with the aid of Ed Roberts in 1974, it was purchased by means of the lots through mail order, proving there has been a big demand for computer systems out of doors universities and big groups. The engineering handbook. The computer on the magazine cover is an empty box with just switches and LEDs on the front panel. The MITS 1440 calculator was featured in the July 1973 issues of Radio-Electronics. Altair had nothing to do with Intel, other than making the 8080 a popular CPU, increasing Intel sales. You can still find Altairs in museums, and some lucky individuals still have their machines. 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