Well, I neither own, nor want to own, an Altair computer. I just already
own the stuff I've been writing about and want ot turn it into something as
useful as possible.
As I've often heard, Altair had the reputation that nothing they ever
shipped worked as shipped, often either requiring one pay for a service of
modifying it at the plant before it was shipped, or to fix it or have it
fixed once it had arrived. From a historical perspective, an Altair that
actually works is an anomaly. That explains why they're all different.
Nevertheless, after the passage of some time and the addition of a number of
vendors to the S-100 market which grew out of the Altair, it was possible to
purchase, from MITS, a complete Altair computer system that was packaged in
a sort of half-desk, with a rackmount pedestal at one end in which the
computer hardware lived. I remember asking about this system here on the
list about three years back, and found that someone actually had a pretty
good picture of it on their website. It apparently used a CDC Hawk drive
interfaced via this Altair Hard Disk Controller, the box for which is what
I'm messing with, and it used an 8800B, and the Altair Floppy Disk Drive I
once owned. It's the functional philosophy of the finished and complete
Altair system that I'm interested in preserving, if that's warranted, and
I'm beginning to believe it's a waste of effort. It's apparent from what
I've gotten from this thread so far, that attention to detail such as that,
and providing self-installing drivers for CP/M would be a waste of time, and
would not increase the practical or economic value of this hardware one
iota. Perhaps making it all work would simply reduce its appeal.
It's likely everyone in this forum is aware that the 1975 Altair was totally
useless. It had no I/O, no software, no nothing that held out any hope of
making it useful. The only thing it did have is potential. The miracle
that Ed Roberts pulled off, ultimately involving Bill Gates, among others,
is in recognizing that there were so many people out there who'd buy light
blinkers and buzzers, etc, just to be playing with electronics. There were
already computers. Some of them were pretty expensive, and the Altair was
no cheapie either, particularly since it really didn't work, even after you
fixed it, since work was an undefined quantity for a CPU with no I/O.
The real miracle, however, was in turning the potential into something real,
namely software. The I/O wasn't the real problem. The absence of software
was the problem and we all know who fixed that.
Once that problem was addressed, the rest was pretty automatic, as the
demand pressed the missing pieces in to existence.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "ajp166" <ajp166_at_bellatlantic.net>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 6:13 PM
Subject: Re: Altair Owners ...
> From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
>
> >
> >without physically modifying the orignal boxes, though that's not always
> >easy. I'm curious about whether a "real" Altair user has preference for
> one
> >or the other of the two modes of interfacing the clearly not original
> MITS
>
>
> My $0.02 is unless it's a 8800B a stock Altair unmodded is not something
> I'd desire to run. To collect as static historical item unmodded is
> fine.
>
> Over the years it was rare I that I'd see a Altair 8800(A) that was pure
> altair.
> I knew of only one, it was one cranky beast!
>
> Allison
>
>
>
Received on Thu Jan 04 2001 - 21:37:57 GMT