Altair 8800

The Altair 8800 of the American manufacturer MITS is a Micro-ordinateur based on the Microprocesseur Intel 8080 has X86 sold in electronic kit to some thousands of specimens for the private individuals in 1975. He is regarded as the first Micro-ordinateur sold to the private individuals of the range of the ancestors of the PC compatible. He is the direct competitor of the Apple I of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Bill Gates and Paul Allen writes their first Logiciel Altair BASIC for this micro computer and creates for the occasion their company Microsoft

For information, the data are seized by switches, and posting is done by of LEDs. Each order or value was programmed by the displacement of the switches and posting appeared in the form of a combination of lit or extinct lights!. It was possible to install there expander cards and even a disk drive

History

ED Roberts and Forrest Mims, two employees of the research center in armament of the US Air Force American of the Kirtland air base in Albuquerque with the New Mexico decide to design a computer for private individual following the failure of MITS in the field of the computers. They were likely to be noticed by a writer of the famous American electronic review Popular electronics of which it did the one. Altaïr was a Micro-ordinateur in kit containing Microprocesseur X86 Intel 8080 has as an amateur declined of one of their community project in electronics of telemetry: the Altair 8800 In 1975, two pioneers of the Microprocessing , Bill Gates and his friend of school Paul Allen discovers Altair 8800 in the review and propose by mail at the company MITS to develop the data-processing Langage Altair BASIC for this machine. ED Roberts accepts and the two friends develop to them BASIC in thirty days 24 hours a day while working with Boston on a simulator PDP-10.

Once the version at the point in October 1975, Paul Allen flies away for Albuquerque with the New Mexico to meet its customer and to make him a demonstration of their Altair BASIC successfully. Miraculeusement the test functioned of the first blow whereas their language tested forever on a truth Altair 8800 and that it is safeguarded on paper tape. Paul Allen and Bill Gates then founds immediately on the spot the company Microsoft and makes a marketing agreement with MITS to touch 35 dollars of income by copy of their software sold with Altair 8800. The legend of Microsoft was born

Altair 8800 does not survive a long time the formidable evolution of the Micro-informatique but remains from a historical point of view the first Micro-ordinateur sold to the private individuals.

Final characteristics after optimum development of the product

  • Manufacturer: MITS

  • Model : Altair 8800
  • Launch date: January 1975
  • Pay of origin: the United States
  • Price: 400 dollars in kit, 600 dollars assembled
  • Processor Intel 8080 and 8080A
  • Speed: 2 MHz
  • Random access memory: 256 bytes extensible with 64 Kio
    • ROMANIAN
  • : optional
  • optional Safeguard: tape reader perforated, cassette, or diskette 5.25 inches
  • Extension: 4 slots of extensible mother chart to 16 total slots
  • Drunk: S-100
    • Video
  • : plays of Electroluminescent diode on the front face
  • Keyboard: sets of switches on the front face
  • Port I/O: series and parallel
  • Operating system: CP/M, MS-DOS, Altair Disk BASIC

Catalog of films

Bonds and photographs Altair 8800

  • data-processing Chronology

  • Altair 8800 www.altair32.com
  • Altair 8800 www.vintage-computer.com
  • Altair 8800 www.oldcomputermuseum.com

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