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Altair at 50: Remembering the first Personal Computer

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Re: Altair at 50: Remembering the first Personal Computer

#21

Post by rbanffy »

thesuitonym wrote: post #18
rbanffy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple got a couple things right - the II had a keyboard, TV output with graphics, and plug-and-play slots (no fiddling with jumpers and dip switches like s-100 and PCs): each card had a well defined space for IO and ROM.

Note that the Apple I was a kit computer that didn't come with anything other than the board and the chips. Not even a case! It's not really like Jobs and Woz had the brilliant idea that nobody had thought of before to include the accessories, it's just that the prices had come down to the point where a person wouldn't balk at buying a preassembled computer with a keyboard, display and a couple of floppy drives.

> It's not really like Jobs and Woz had the brilliant idea

They understood that, if the computer had a keyboard and a professional-looking case, a lot more people would buy one.

Re: Altair at 50: Remembering the first Personal Computer

#22

Post by dowager_dan99 »

igtztorrero wrote: post #3

The Altair didn’t survive for very long, but essentially being responsible for the creation of Microsoft is a pretty Big Deal. Bill Gates: "Popular Electronics" magazine cover of January 1975 change my life" Paul Allen write the simulator on Harvard PDP-10, Bill Gates write main code of Basic, Monte Davidoff write Math package. They coded day and night during 2 months. Micro-Soft was born.

and the fact that MITS couldn't keep up with demand gave birth (IMO) to the 3rd party (licensed and unofficial) peripherals ecosystem.

Re: Altair at 50: Remembering the first Personal Computer

#23

Post by dowager_dan99 »

reaperducer wrote: post #19
igtztorrero wrote: post #3

The Altair didn’t survive for very long, but essentially being responsible for the creation of Microsoft is a pretty Big Deal. Bill Gates: "Popular Electronics" magazine cover of January 1975 change my life" Paul Allen write the simulator on Harvard PDP-10, Bill Gates write main code of Basic, Monte Davidoff write Math package. They coded day and night during 2 months. Micro-Soft was born.

Altair didn’t survive for very long, The company sold itself to Pertec for what was a very good amount of money back then. In HN terms, it was a successful unicorn bro exit.

and if I remember it correctly Roberts used the money to buy a peanut farm? Is that equivalent to a tech bro buying the coast of California or an island?

Re: Altair at 50: Remembering the first Personal Computer

#24

Post by jmount »

whartung wrote: post #14
SoftTalker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it not have a serial port? Would have assumed that connecting it to a terminal or teletype was the standard thing.

My first computing experience was with an IMSAI 8080 that class assembled the year before. It had a keyboard and video board, rather than a terminal. The monitor was open chassis to boot (ah the old days when we didn’t protect children from lethal electricity). It had a ROM monitor and cassette tape. You had to type in (in hex) a short machine language program into the monitor to load BASIC from a cassette. We simply…

Ah man- the power supply in the IMSAI 8080 was scary enough, plus you had the monitor power supply open. Fun times- the "book" sequence on ours was "fat finger in the paper tape reading software, read the cassette IO software from paper tape, load BASIC from cassette, and good to go."

Re: Altair at 50: Remembering the first Personal Computer

#25

Post by Someone »

rbanffy wrote: post #21
thesuitonym wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the Apple I was a kit computer that didn't come with anything other than the board and the chips. Not even a case! It's not really like Jobs and Woz had the brilliant idea that nobody had thought of before to include the accessories, it's just that the prices had come down to the point where a person wouldn't balk at buying a preassembled computer with a keyboard, display and a couple of floppy drives.

> It's not really like Jobs and Woz had the brilliant idea They understood that, if the computer had a keyboard and a professional-looking case, a lot more people would buy one.

Jobs certainly understood that, but Woz?

https://www.apple2history.org/history/ah04/:

”Jobs thought the cigar boxes that sat on the … desktops during Homebrew meetings were as elegant as fly traps. The angular, blue and black sheet-metal case that housed Processor Technology’s Sol struck him as clumsy and industrial … A plastic case was generally considered a needless expense compared to the cheaper and more pliable sheet metal. Hobbyists, so the arguments went, didn’t care as much for appearance as they did for substance. Jobs wanted to model the case for the Apple after those Hewlett-Packard used for its calculators. He admired their sleek, fresh lines, their hardy finish, and the way they looked at home on a table or desk.”

Re: Altair at 50: Remembering the first Personal Computer

#26

Post by dowager_dan99 »

rbanffy wrote: post #4
berlinbrowndev wrote: post #2

Cool I always thought the first PCs were like the TRS or Commodore 64 computers.

There is some controversy - you could actually use a TRS-80, an Apple II or a PET right after taking it out of the box. I think that, if we define a personal computer as a machine that is designed for a single interactive user, the LGP-30 would be a good candidate. It was not, however, a home computer. For me, a personal computer needs more than switches and LEDs as its UI. With a serial port, a terminal, and a monit…

keep the historical context in mind. There were people who wanted a computer at home and people who wanted to bring home the experience they got with access to powerful mainframe & minicomputers at work or school, so there was both a push to build your own computer and a desire to build IO devices like teletypes. The combo, all-in-one is the real revolution (IMO) that you got with the Apple II or the Sol. The TRS-80s and PETs feel a lot more like early commercialization in comparison. Woz was motivated by showing off what he could create, because that's how he communicated. It makes sense that a keyboard and TV - with graphics - shows off way better, same with being able to program in basic "... for $300 you can build a computer that's so good you can type programs on it and run them..."

Re: Altair at 50: Remembering the first Personal Computer

#27

Post by embedded_hiker »

My school library ( 6th - 8th grades ) had this magazine, and they had a 9-week class on programming in BASIC using a 110 bps teletype connected to an HP2000C that was shared by several school districts. That was my start in all of this. I didn't get my own computer until the C64 price dropped to $200 in 1983.

Re: Altair at 50: Remembering the first Personal Computer

#28

Post by b112 »

dowager_dan99 wrote: post #23
reaperducer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Altair didn’t survive for very long, The company sold itself to Pertec for what was a very good amount of money back then. In HN terms, it was a successful unicorn bro exit.

and if I remember it correctly Roberts used the money to buy a peanut farm? Is that equivalent to a tech bro buying the coast of California or an island?

Did he use all the money, or some?

Re: Altair at 50: Remembering the first Personal Computer

#29

Post by SoftTalker »

ebruchez wrote: post #20
SoftTalker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it not have a serial port? Would have assumed that connecting it to a terminal or teletype was the standard thing.

One of the interesting aspects of the Altair was that it was based on a bus called the S-100 bus. You would have a CPU card and a memory card at least, but everything else was optional. The serial board was separate, and strictly not absolutely necessary to play with the computer, since you could enter simple programs directly from the front panel.

I remember S-100 from when I was a kid. Never was hands-on with that hardware but there were all kinds of ads for cards in Byte magazine and others. Seemed like you could get a card for almost anything in S-100 protocol.

Re: Altair at 50: Remembering the first Personal Computer

#30

Post by Sharlin »

shakna wrote: post #5

I was completely distracted by the magazine cover. The calculator being advertised there, and the wording, caught my attention. The magazine issued is available here [0]. Apparently, it really was wiring up an entire calculator. > ... Start assembly by installing and soldering into place the fixed resistors. Then proceed to installing the three electrolytic capacitors, the diodes, and the transistors, taking care to…

What caught my eye was the headline about CCDs as successors to video camera tubes. Charge-coupled devices being, of course, the sensor technology now used by essentially all of the billions of digital cameras on the planet.
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