Altair - A different perspective

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Fri Aug 14 15:17:19 1998

>pretty much a non-starter. The Altair was an improvement, but it was a
>pretty much a non-starter that fizzled after about 10,000 units. The

it that day 10,000 was a lot of systems!

< >Altair was the grandfather of the S-100 bus and CP/M, both of which
< >fizzled and left only a minor mark on MS-DOS, which didn't fizzle.

S100 would be dominent through the mid 80s. S100 system were being built
with 80386s and ran faster than the PCs with same.

I have a Compupro 8086/8088 10mhz that was faster than any IBM PC
hardware in 1982.

CP/M left a major mark on MS-dos being the source point!

Also the idea of a BIOS is a CP/M concept.

< >survivor. So, if somebody were really looking at collecting Altairs as
< >machine that "started it all", I think they have been misled and would
< >better off collecting the IBM PC, early Apples, early HP desktops, the
< >PDP-8, and all of the PDP-1's they can find :-)

To many slighly older PDP-8 and HPs were the early for runners for the
small size and proximate affordability.

< money, the prices lept ahead - but only in the brands which the collecto
< recognised. The Altair is recognised as significant, is relativly
< uncommon, and every article on computer history sings it's praises. You
< could almost guarentee that the prices would go up.

It's significance was that it was real and well exposed by Popular
Electronics. The Mark-8 was less real in that it wasn't available as a
complete kit or well presented. There are predecessor machines to both.
If we want the first Microcomputer why not the intel MCS-8? You could buy
one complete before either Mark-8 or Altair by many years.

As to extoling the virtues, altair was in teh right place at the right
time. Technically it was a DOG. The IMSAI was a vastly superior machine.

Allison
Received on Fri Aug 14 1998 - 15:17:19 BST