Altair Owners ...

From: ajp166 <ajp166_at_bellatlantic.net>
Date: Wed Jan 3 17:52:22 2001

From: Rob Kapteyn <kapteynr_at_cboe.com>


>Hey wait a minute ...
>A BIOS on an Altair ?
>
>Sure there were add-ons (years later) that did this, but if you really
want authenticity this is what we did --
>
>I always had to "boot" my Altair with a simple paper tape loader program
entered from the switches on
>front panel. I did this so many times, I had the 30 octal codes
memorized.


Often several times until it read the cassette correctly! Saving stuff
was easy though bets were
off if you could read it later.

First homebrew board 8223 (x2 for 64 bytes plus 2 7489s for 16bytes of
scratch ram) prom boot!

>Once I had Altair BASIC loaded, I generally kept the machine powered up
as long as possible.


Or until it crashed!

>I never knew anyone who actually had a actual floppy for their Altair.
>I seem to remember that they cost more than the computer itself, and the
computer was quite >expensive --($2,000 1974 dollars).


I built and debugged two of them for others.

Allison
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 17:52:22 GMT