The Altair 8800: A Pioneering Computer System

When it comes to computer history, the Altair 8800 is one of the most iconic and influential systems of its time. Designed by Ed Roberts and manufactured by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), this pioneering computer system was released in 1975 and quickly captured the attention of electronics enthusiasts and hobbyists around the world.

The Altair 8800 was a self-contained computer kit that consisted of a circuit board, keyboard, and display monitor. It was essentially a programmable calculator on steroids, with a built-in microprocessor and memory expansion capabilities. One of the unique features of the Altair 8800 was its user-friendly design, which allowed users to easily plug in their own peripherals and upgrade their system as needed.

The Altair 8800's impact on the computer industry cannot be overstated. It was one of the first commercially successful home computers, paving the way for a new generation of personal computers that would revolutionize the way people lived, worked, and played. The system's affordability, flexibility, and ease of use made it accessible to hobbyists and enthusiasts who were eager to explore the possibilities of computing.

In the 1970s, electronics was a booming field, and computer technology was rapidly advancing. Microprocessors, memory chips, and other essential components were becoming increasingly affordable and widely available. The Altair 8800 tapped into this trend, providing a platform for hobbyists to experiment with programming languages like BASIC, assembly language, and Pascal.

One of the key innovations that set the Altair 8800 apart from its competitors was its use of the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor. This processor, developed by Mosel Electronic Systems (MOS), was designed specifically for low-power applications and offered a number of benefits over earlier processors, including improved performance, reduced power consumption, and increased reliability.

The Altair 8800's popularity was fueled by its widespread adoption among electronics enthusiasts and hobbyists. Many users were drawn to the system's ease of use, flexibility, and affordability, which made it an attractive alternative to more expensive commercial computers. As a result, the Altair 8800 became one of the most popular computer systems of its time, with thousands of units sold worldwide.

In addition to its technical innovations, the Altair 8800 also played a significant role in shaping the computer industry's culture and community. The system's popularity spawned a thriving ecosystem of developers, programmers, and enthusiasts who shared their knowledge, experiences, and ideas through magazines, forums, and conventions.

The Altair 8800's legacy can still be seen today, with many modern computer systems drawing inspiration from its design and architecture. Its impact on the development of personal computing cannot be overstated, and it remains one of the most iconic and influential computer systems in history.

The Altair 8800 has also been recognized as a pioneering achievement in the field of computer engineering. In 1995, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) awarded the system's design team with the prestigious Pioneer Award for its contribution to the development of personal computing.

Today, many vintage computer museums and collections have Altair 8800 systems on display, serving as testament to the power and significance of this pioneering computer system. The Altair 8800's influence can also be seen in modern computer systems, from smartphones to supercomputers, which owe a debt of gratitude to its innovative design and architecture.

The Altair 8800 is more than just a relic of the past – it represents a pivotal moment in the evolution of personal computing. Its impact on the industry continues to be felt today, and its legacy serves as a reminder of the power of innovation and creativity in shaping the world we live in.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwar games is mentioned certainly in the ready player one book but um i don't know if it's in the film i haven't seen the film yet um what what was inside 8080 why does it look remarkably like the front of an altar uh because it was based on an altar maybe the mci 8080 was a machine that come out not long after the altar it's an s 100 bus based machine so s 100 means that it had a connector had a back plane but there was a hundred connections which carried the data bus address bus and all the control lines for the processor the back plane didn't do anything it was just a bunch of connectors you'd have a a cpu board maybe a ram board maybe a serial board you could expand it so effectively it was it was pretty much the same as the altair but it kind of looked nice with its nice big switches a little bit sort of pdp-8 style switches nice big ones there the leds that would light up on the front um so kind of a sexy looking outer they remind me of almost the front of a of an old vcr yeah now i can see some of them say address some of them say data some of some say input i mean how does it how would it work you literally toggle in binary data um and the leds would light up on the panel there with your binary output from it so if you want to write data to address xero ff then you would convert that into binary you would toggle that binary in and then you in the same way you would toggle in the the data that goes there and that's it so it's very very time consuming but actually i mean everybody talks about that and the way the altair is done and it is a very very slow and serious process but quite often what you would be doing is just toggling in a few lines of code or maybe just a jump even that would jump to a bit of code in memory that would then initialize the disk drive or the tape or whatever um so what they call bootloader code just to jump the machine into life and get it into its peripherals so you've got the address bus there you can set the address and then you've got your data and you can toggle that in as well and that way you can basically it's like a poke command in basic you can poke data into a certain memory location yes you can use them like that but ultimately these things you could have a serial port if you had a serial port you could hook up a terminal um you might have a rom in there which might be basic or you'd load basic info or anything else maybe cpm from a disk tape whatever interfaces you had connected to it you could get your data in and out so it's not like we all just sat there toggling in code day after day um in binary a few people did um but you know these things were a bit more usable than that i remember when we looked in the altair there were all sorts of upgrades and changes and would that be quite common on one of these as well that people would just add their own different boards yeah i mean these machines were for enthusiasts you know the people that were buying these um quite often were electronics e kind of people um so yeah you would buy one and you would just keep making it better and the same as everybody does with their pcs you know more ram more speed more power it was exactly the same so yeah the altair the original outside that we have isn't really much of an out air lift you know it was upgraded so much this one was a bit different it's had a bigger back plane in it so it's got a a toy's back plane there so you can plug in more boards and you know same thing would have been going on let's upgrade it we need more ram for our applications you're really into computers huh yeah it looks to me like kind of quite a professional machine so it's probably bending reality to have had the hacker keyed with it sitting on his bookcase yeah i mean these things weren't cheap so you know they were um you know reasonably good money so whether matthew lightman was his name i think um uh nice broderick something lightman like i remember um yes was uh um yeah would have afforded to have one of those machines in his bedroom i don't know because it's the machine it's just about to see a picture of their machine um you've got the terminal that went next to it you had his little speaker box um so he could speak um and his vhs player on the shelf there that's a fair old amount of money's worth of gear um but maybe his parents were loaded i don't know um but uh but there you go he had one and they i mean were they bending it a bit with things like the speaker do you want to hear it talk i mean what sort of hardware would you have needed to have made a computer of that era talk um i mean there was basic speech synthesis out there so it's it's feasible make mistakes yes they do how can i talk maybe it spoke a bit better than the actual real um speech synthesizers did at the time i mean i can't remember when the spo 256 came out which is a chip which is a speech synth chip you were linking those up to early and things but i mean speech synthesis has been around some time so um it was kind of feasible maybe normally on computer file we get the lid off we have a look around but this particular one's being refurbished yeah so this one is a bit of an empty shell at the minute so we have one of our volunteers has kindly taken the boards out um and um it's getting them working so we've got there's a processor card in a ram card um the s100 is pretty standard so you can test it in other machines uh the altair he's already done so we now will very shortly have an altair where you can well you could toggle in the data if you want but we probably won't um but we will be able to load in the little program to just fill up with timing loops and as those timing loops play interferes with the radio the radio then creates tones and you've got music and apparently there was this sort of reward given for the first um thing that they they really made an outer do of any use if you call that of any use um but that is music of course it is um so yeah so that will be working but also the next thing is get the insight working as well um so we're just getting the boards uh done uh then we'll refurbish the machine itself hopefully you better come here and have a play and we can take it to that gate because yellow key yellow castle and we can get in there now we have what could possibly be a sword or maybe just an arrow so um so we can now take that one and we can come out is it one thing at a time though yeah yeah so you've got to have the right things at the right time um so we can go this way oh but we can'twar games is mentioned certainly in the ready player one book but um i don't know if it's in the film i haven't seen the film yet um what what was inside 8080 why does it look remarkably like the front of an altar uh because it was based on an altar maybe the mci 8080 was a machine that come out not long after the altar it's an s 100 bus based machine so s 100 means that it had a connector had a back plane but there was a hundred connections which carried the data bus address bus and all the control lines for the processor the back plane didn't do anything it was just a bunch of connectors you'd have a a cpu board maybe a ram board maybe a serial board you could expand it so effectively it was it was pretty much the same as the altair but it kind of looked nice with its nice big switches a little bit sort of pdp-8 style switches nice big ones there the leds that would light up on the front um so kind of a sexy looking outer they remind me of almost the front of a of an old vcr yeah now i can see some of them say address some of them say data some of some say input i mean how does it how would it work you literally toggle in binary data um and the leds would light up on the panel there with your binary output from it so if you want to write data to address xero ff then you would convert that into binary you would toggle that binary in and then you in the same way you would toggle in the the data that goes there and that's it so it's very very time consuming but actually i mean everybody talks about that and the way the altair is done and it is a very very slow and serious process but quite often what you would be doing is just toggling in a few lines of code or maybe just a jump even that would jump to a bit of code in memory that would then initialize the disk drive or the tape or whatever um so what they call bootloader code just to jump the machine into life and get it into its peripherals so you've got the address bus there you can set the address and then you've got your data and you can toggle that in as well and that way you can basically it's like a poke command in basic you can poke data into a certain memory location yes you can use them like that but ultimately these things you could have a serial port if you had a serial port you could hook up a terminal um you might have a rom in there which might be basic or you'd load basic info or anything else maybe cpm from a disk tape whatever interfaces you had connected to it you could get your data in and out so it's not like we all just sat there toggling in code day after day um in binary a few people did um but you know these things were a bit more usable than that i remember when we looked in the altair there were all sorts of upgrades and changes and would that be quite common on one of these as well that people would just add their own different boards yeah i mean these machines were for enthusiasts you know the people that were buying these um quite often were electronics e kind of people um so yeah you would buy one and you would just keep making it better and the same as everybody does with their pcs you know more ram more speed more power it was exactly the same so yeah the altair the original outside that we have isn't really much of an out air lift you know it was upgraded so much this one was a bit different it's had a bigger back plane in it so it's got a a toy's back plane there so you can plug in more boards and you know same thing would have been going on let's upgrade it we need more ram for our applications you're really into computers huh yeah it looks to me like kind of quite a professional machine so it's probably bending reality to have had the hacker keyed with it sitting on his bookcase yeah i mean these things weren't cheap so you know they were um you know reasonably good money so whether matthew lightman was his name i think um uh nice broderick something lightman like i remember um yes was uh um yeah would have afforded to have one of those machines in his bedroom i don't know because it's the machine it's just about to see a picture of their machine um you've got the terminal that went next to it you had his little speaker box um so he could speak um and his vhs player on the shelf there that's a fair old amount of money's worth of gear um but maybe his parents were loaded i don't know um but uh but there you go he had one and they i mean were they bending it a bit with things like the speaker do you want to hear it talk i mean what sort of hardware would you have needed to have made a computer of that era talk um i mean there was basic speech synthesis out there so it's it's feasible make mistakes yes they do how can i talk maybe it spoke a bit better than the actual real um speech synthesizers did at the time i mean i can't remember when the spo 256 came out which is a chip which is a speech synth chip you were linking those up to early and things but i mean speech synthesis has been around some time so um it was kind of feasible maybe normally on computer file we get the lid off we have a look around but this particular one's being refurbished yeah so this one is a bit of an empty shell at the minute so we have one of our volunteers has kindly taken the boards out um and um it's getting them working so we've got there's a processor card in a ram card um the s100 is pretty standard so you can test it in other machines uh the altair he's already done so we now will very shortly have an altair where you can well you could toggle in the data if you want but we probably won't um but we will be able to load in the little program to just fill up with timing loops and as those timing loops play interferes with the radio the radio then creates tones and you've got music and apparently there was this sort of reward given for the first um thing that they they really made an outer do of any use if you call that of any use um but that is music of course it is um so yeah so that will be working but also the next thing is get the insight working as well um so we're just getting the boards uh done uh then we'll refurbish the machine itself hopefully you better come here and have a play and we can take it to that gate because yellow key yellow castle and we can get in there now we have what could possibly be a sword or maybe just an arrow so um so we can now take that one and we can come out is it one thing at a time though yeah yeah so you've got to have the right things at the right time um so we can go this way oh but we can't\n"