Chuck Guzis wrote:
> I find myself in the position of trying to figure
> out what the latest posts have to do with 'Experience using an Altair
> 8800 ("Personal computer" from 70s)'.
Thanks! It's gotten so off-topic, I've all but stopped following this thread.
I recently found a new home for my Altair, and in doing so, I set it up and
run it to show it working. This reminded me of my Altair emulation I wrote
back around 2003 when I decided not to maintain the Altair in a "ready to go"
state and packed it away.
This is more than a "pretty picture" Altair Front Panel emulator, it gives a
pretty accurate emulation of my complete system which includes:
Hardware:
Mits: Front panel, 8080 CPU, 88-SIO serial
CDC: 64k Dynamic RAM
NorthStar: MDS-A1 floppy controlle
Compu/Time: CT-102 Real Time clock
Homebuilt: Dual serial
Lear Seigler: ADM3A terminal
Sugart: two SA-400 drives
It also contains .NSI (NorthStarImage)s with a fair bit of usable software
including (but not limited to - there's more - this was my working system
at the time)"
Bootable:
NorthStar DOS 5.1
My own DMF (one of the first OS's I wrote)
Fig-Forth system
Application software:
North Star BASIC
Byte Shop of Westminster XEK Editor/Assembler/Disassembler
MicroStuf RCONS/CBBS
Altair Memory test
My own BASIC
My own ALPS (Assembly Language Programming System)
Games:
Dynacomp Chess Master
Dynacomp Valdez Supertanker simulation
Cranston Manor Adventure
Hunt The Wumpus & many other simple games of the time
No longer having mu own Altair, I've made some minor enhancements to the
"Virtual Altair" and posted about it - just in case anyone would like to
experience actually RUNNING/USING a 70's Altair system!
This was mostly a cut/paste of a posting I had made in a different forum, and
included a bit of information (not needed here:-) about "What is an Altair"
which happened to include a quote from correspondance to me by "Ed Roberts"
which said
"We coined the phrase Personal Computer and it was first applied to the
Altair, i.e., by definition the first personal computer." ...
"The beginning of the personal computer industry started without question
at MITS with the Altair."
and a couple reasons I do think that this is a fairly reasonable statement!
This (or course) sparked the never-ending controversy of "what is a personal
computer" and "which was the earliest"...
My own interest in classic computing has always been about "Historical,
Technology" - it always seems odd (to me) how many others seems to be more
concerned with "Terminology"
To me a "personal computer" is one "anyone could have and you might find in
someone's home" - There are of course plenty of pre-Altair systems that could
fit in someones home, and "someone could have had" - but not at all common in
such and environment. I do think the Jan 75 issue of Popular Electronics
help a lot to get the Altair into such a environment.
And it was made less-clear by IBM's choice to name the 5150 the "Personal
Computer" (which made sense for them - prior to that most of their offerings
were large time-sharing mainframes!)
FWIW, my own "first personal computer" was NOT the Altair - my first ever was
a "COSMAC ELF" - it's been so long a don't remember much about it (and I got
rid of it before I started "Daves Old Computers") - IIRC is was an 1802
CPU, with a key-keypad - it DID have a "video display" but not character
based (just dots) - it has 256 bytes of memory which was ALL the memory in
the system (so you had to "see your program code on the screen"), and NO
storage (you always had to key in your program code).
This was very limited, and I soon replaced it with various homebuilt (mostly
8080 based) systems - at one point I managed to obtain some solenoid controller
reel-to-reel tape drives from a decomissioned lab - and built my own automatic
storage system (using some direct digital-to-tape methods I managed to get
working).
But the Altair was the first system I had with floppy disks and substantial
memory - and the first I could use for the kinds of things I had been doing
on the universities IBM 360 and PDP-11s - in other words a usable personal
computer!
Dave
