This computer was one of the first "home" computers ever made, it was sold as a kit, but for additional money, you could buy one fully assembled.
It had no keyboard, the "program" had to be entered with the switches located on the front panel of the "computer", and as it didn't have video output (yet), the result was displayed via LEDs.
Another computer which had almost the same characteristics was launched by IMSAI and was called IMSAI 8080 (see both in the "Emulators" section).
The ALTAIR 8800 had one input port, also called the "Sense Switches" (I/O address 255) which was the left hand 8 address switches. Address 255 was also used on the IMSAI. The IMSAI front panel differed from the Altair in that you could also output to port 255 to a displayed LED buffer above the sense switches - a feature the Altair did not have (it only had input). The Altair sense switch were used during boot into Altair DOS to specify the terminal port to the DOS.
MITS made several peripherals and cards for this computer, namely, a video card, a serial card to connect a terminal, a RAM expansion card and a 8" floppy drive that used hard sectored floppies and stored 300 KB.
Several models were launched, they had the same characteristics except the CPU (8080 and later 8080A).
Believe it or not, the name "Altair" comes from Star Trek! The young daughter of the 'Popular Electronics' magazine editor gave it the name of the destination planet of the Enterprise from the episode she was watching.
Please consider donating your old computer / videogame system to Old-Computers.com or one of our partners from anywhere in the world (Europe, America, Asia, etc.).
Hi All, I''m Jay Lucas, and I have been "into" microcomputers for a long time. My wife is cleaning out the basement, and if anyone wants my old Altair 8800, or its 8" Floppy drive, or one of three Apple Newtons, or any of my 4 Macintosh original computers, let me know. jaylucas@me.com or phone at 703.347.2000 (text preferred). I''m in Alexandria, VA.
Thursday 28th November 2019
Jay Lucas (United States)
"Forbidden Planet" was set on Altair 4 which would usually mean the 4th planet orbiting Altair counting outwards. Likewise Earth is sometimes referred to as Sol 3. I think the Star Trek planet was another number presumably orbitting Altair. Given the size of the brightness at the end of "Forbidden Planet" it would have to be much further out or in a different fictional universe.
Monday 10th February 2014
David Payne (Melbourne, Australia)
I think after the first 30 or so bytes the loading process would get tiresome, particularly if you had nearly finished $ someone kicked the power plug as happened at Steve Dompier''s famous demo.
