Altair 8800 Simulator • Hacker News Board

Re: Altair 8800 Simulator

#11

Post by jackhack » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #10

What did people use these for in real life? Were they essentially toys or were there peripherals that made them useful for solving problems?

That's a bit like asking what did carpenters did with hammers and hand-saws in this age of CAD/CAM. :)

I assure you the Altairs were quite useful. Mostly, owners enjoyed the luxury of working on their very own computer, rather than a time-share machine's account from the corporation or university.

It's difficult to communicate how this felt, in this age of ubiquitous computing. A machine that one could reboot whenever you wanted. Tinker. Explore. They wrote games. Controlled hardware. Learned what made a computer tick. Connect a modem and talk to others. Sure, it was primitive, but at the time it felt as cutting-edge as space travel.

If I recall correctly, the Altair ran CP/M, and could run the early Zork infocom text adventure series.

Re: Altair 8800 Simulator

#12

Post by mywittyname » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

jackhack wrote: post #11

mywittyname wrote: post #10

What did people use these for in real life? Were they essentially toys or were there peripherals that made them useful for solving problems?

That's a bit like asking what did carpenters did with hammers and hand-saws in this age of CAD/CAM. :) I assure you the Altairs were quite useful. Mostly, owners enjoyed the luxury of working on their very own computer, rather than a time-share machine's account from the corporation or university. It's difficult to communicate how this felt, in this age of ubiquitous computing. A machine that one could reboot wheneve…

I guess the basic model was so lacking in features that I found it hard to understand how people would make use of it. So it's more like asking how people actually used old steam cars after watching a video of Jay Leno spending hours prepping his and learning they could only drive 15 miles between fill-ups.

I did some research after posting that and realized that you could get teletype terminals for them. This makes it much easier to see what people did. I originally thought that most people punched op-codes into that front panel, which seems like an awful lot of work for not much reward.

Re: Altair 8800 Simulator

#13

Post by awful » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #10

What did people use these for in real life? Were they essentially toys or were there peripherals that made them useful for solving problems?

All of my college peeps learned BASIC* while running the interpreter. We learned to fingerbone in the seq. to load from the tape, after the tape loaded I don't recall, but we then could get an OK prompt maybe from the BASIC interpreter. We used TeleType terminals w/paper rolls to print, with a tape reader. In parallel we learned Motorola MC6800 mach language on the new Heathkit trainers; our final task was to interface a speaker and play "Anchors Away" as my prof was an ex Navy instructor. *We learned BASIC, but by applying it to data and practical problems IIRC like physics of projectile motion, electrical like resistors, simple databases. Was a Pop Electronics reader from 1970 or so.

Re: Altair 8800 Simulator

#14

Post by waimate01 » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 11:46 PM UTC

azhenley wrote: post #9

This makes me want to go code a 8080 emulator.

That simulator has an 8080 emulator built-in. It's fully functional.

Re: Altair 8800 Simulator

#15

Post by unimpressive » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 2:32 AM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #12

jackhack wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit like asking what did carpenters did with hammers and hand-saws in this age of CAD/CAM. :) I assure you the Altairs were quite useful. Mostly, owners enjoyed the luxury of working on their very own computer, rather than a time-share machine's account from the corporation or university. It's difficult to communicate how this felt, in this age of ubiquitous computing. A machine that one could reboot wheneve…

I guess the basic model was so lacking in features that I found it hard to understand how people would make use of it. So it's more like asking how people actually used old steam cars after watching a video of Jay Leno spending hours prepping his and learning they could only drive 15 miles between fill-ups. I did some research after posting that and realized that you could get teletype terminals for them. This makes…

Video of someone loading BASIC with a teletype:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv5b1Xowxdk

Re: Altair 8800 Simulator

#16

Post by rbanffy » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 4:01 AM UTC

tempodox wrote: post #4

antirez wrote: post #2

This makes me put my ZX Spectrum in the right perspective.

The Z80 is a science fiction luxury space ship when compared to the 8080.