Tech Rumors/Legends?

From: Lawrence LeMay <lemay_at_cs.umn.edu>
Date: Thu Jun 1 16:44:01 2000

>
> 4. I've heard somewhere, and the source is lost to age,
> that - the Altair for the January 1975 article was just
> a empty case and that no regular orders for the Altair
> 8800 where filled until April 1, 1975.
> (Sure, I drooled on the magazine at the time, but it
> might as well costs a million dollars, I was a single
> sailor collecting $151.00 every two weeks, saving to
> get married at the end of April.)
>

The original Altair prototype was lost while being shipped to Popular
Electronics. Thus, the picture on the front cover of the magazine was
indeed an empty case. The article contains pictures of the prototype
which were taken before it was shipped. Those photos show a
computer with no bus, instead the boards were connected using
ribbon cable.

Ed Roberts came up with a new design for the replacement, which
included a bus with room for additional cards, and a 'powerful'
8-amp power supply, installed in an 'Optima' cabinet.

Source: Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer.

-Lawrence LeMay
Received on Thu Jun 01 2000 - 16:44:01 BST