Thanks Altair

[billvon 3,070]

In 1977 I was 12 years old. My father wanted to get me something for my birthday so we went into Polk's Hobbies in New York City. This was a 5 story building that had a different theme on every floor - model trains, model airplanes, slot car racing etc. I remember walking through the first two floors looking at all the trains and cars and thinking what a cool place this was.

On the third floor, in the back, I saw my first computer. It was an Altair 8800. The front was full of blinking lights. Watching them, and watching the people there working on it, I knew that this was where all the blinking lights from science fiction shows came from - but for the first time these actually _meant_ something, These weren't just trying to look high tech. I watched the people there flip switches and type things into a keyboard. They had a terminal connected and were trying to get an 8" floppy disk drive to work with it. And despite my being 12 I understood what they were trying to do. They were trying to read a sector off the disk but kept getting the wrong sector back. A lot of things fell into place then for me - how mass storage worked, how terminals worked, what binary was, what computers could do.

I must have stood there for half an hour watching them while my father tried to entice me upstairs with promises of a slot car track. I never wanted anything as much as I wanted a computer like that, but the price at the time ($600) was far beyond what I or my parents could afford. It would be another two years until I could save up even half the purchase price of my first computer, a Commodore PET 2001.

A few weeks ago I was searching the net for something else and saw a reference to the Altair 8800. I hadn't thought about that machine in 20 years, and I did a little more searching to see what became of it. It has since become an iconic antique, since it was the first personal computer ever offered to the public. I got on Ebay and found a broken one for sale. It's sitting on my bench now, guts exposed. Just by looking at it I can tell what parts of it need to be replaced; some of the power supply components were never designed with a 40 year life in mind. Even when I get it working it will be a fraction of the power of any computer I've worked with since. But it got me started on this path I'm on, and I'm grateful it was there for me to find in that hobby store 36 years ago.

[normiss 851]

AWESOME!!!


Also eerily familiar!

I'm NOT going searching for any DEC Vax's or Sperry Univacs, or TRS-80's though.

[kallend 2,106]

Cool story.

I had been using "mainframe" since 1967, and thought personal computers were silly. That mainframe had 72k 64-bit words of magnetic core memory (bytes hadn't been popularized then) and a bunch of tape drives. Took 20 minutes to run a 3-d deconvolution program that runs on a PC in 5 seconds now. I/O was by punched paper tape. Took 20 minutes to run a tomography program that runs on a PC in 5 seconds now. I/O was by punched paper tape.

Moved on to an IBM370 in 1970. Bought my Apple II+ in 1980.

Wish I still had the Apple II+

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[normiss 851]

Do you have any clue how many old ladies it took to weave those toroidal cores on the arrays???


Tape drives aka trash streamers
paper tape aka paper tape reader/shredder

I do miss the CFD work on the Crays though.

Wind tunnels are awesome.
Come to think of it, so were the chicken launchers.

[skydiver604 0]

wasn't the Altair 8800 the inspiration for Steve Wozniak to build the Apple I ??

http://news.oneindia.in/2006/09/27/co-founder-tells-his-side-of-apple-story-1159346150.html

"The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo

[BillyVance 34]

normiss

AWESOME!!!


Also eerily familiar!

I'm NOT going searching for any DEC Vax's or Sperry Univacs, or TRS-80's though.

My folks still have their TRS-80 computer in the original boxes in their basement. I remember playing games on it that you had to load up with a cassette tape deck.

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[BillyVance 34]

kallend

Cool story.

I had been using "mainframe" since 1967, and thought personal computers were silly. That mainframe had 72k 64-bit words of magnetic core memory (bytes hadn't been popularized then) and a bunch of tape drives. Took 20 minutes to run a 3-d deconvolution program that runs on a PC in 5 seconds now. I/O was by punched paper tape. Took 20 minutes to run a tomography program that runs on a PC in 5 seconds now. I/O was by punched paper tape.

Moved on to an IBM370 in 1970. Bought my Apple II+ in 1980.

Wish I still had the Apple II+

I still have my Mac SE30 in my attic.

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[SansSuit 1]

Quote

I still have my Mac SE30 in my attic.

My Mac Plus still works. It is not my primary computing device.

Peace,
-Dawson.
http://www.SansSuit.com
The Society for the Advancement of Naked Skydiving

[normiss 851]

I think I still have a case cracker and the sooooper long torx tool for those!

[sfzombie13 324]

that was like the ti 99-4a, i remember typing for hours and saving it to a cassette. then you get to play the game, a corny scrolling river with obstacles and a boat going down. but there were some really cool games that came in cartridges you could put in the console. i had mine until i gave it to my daughter a few years back. the number one was broken, not much you can do without that, wouldn't even boot without pressing 1.

_________________________________________
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes

[skydiver30960 0]

Growing up, we had an Apple IIe with all the trimmings: double floppy drive, color monitor, 512K RAM extension, mouse, joystick, massive color dot matrix printer, the whole shebang. It was still getting regular use in 1991-2 when I was typing essays for college applications.

Print Shop (couldn't get enough of those cheesy graphics), LodeRunner, The King's Quest series, Police Quest (ALMOST got them to get me Leisure Suit Larry, but no go), and more ill-gotten games than I could count.

A few years ago, long after I moved out, in a fit of house cleaning, my mother... set it all on the curb.

...it was gone in MINUTES. A huge chunk of my childhood, gone in an instant.

Elvisio "I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out, and were silenced" Rodriguez

[buff 0]

normiss

AWESOME!!!


Also eerily familiar!

I'm NOT going searching for any DEC Vax's or Sperry Univacs, or TRS-80's though.

You pay the shipping and I will send you an HP Alpha loaded with VMS. Same as a VAX minus the full pallet of color coded manuals.

I would use it as a boat anchor but there is no water in Kansas so I have no need to own a boat.

It's called the Hillbilly Hop N Pop dude.
If you're gonna be stupid, you better be tough.
That's fucked up. Watermelons do not grow on trees! ~Skymama

[jcd11235 0]

On one hand, very cool!

On the other hand, it's rarely a good sign when you can remember back when your new to you antique was brand new.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[normiss 851]

Ahh..the Alpha series...then end of VAX's.

That was when I started moving to servers.
IBM and HP.

[labrys 0]

I've still got my first computer, but it's dead. I'm going to open it up and install a Raspberry Pi inside it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12703674

Owned by Remi #?

[champu 1]

I think we can all agree that the Z80 processor is, and always has been, ballin' outta control.

[billvon 3,070]

>I've still got my first computer, but it's dead. I'm going to open it up and install a
>Raspberry Pi inside it.

Yep. Another option I have is to take all the guts out of the Altair and replace them with something like this:

http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?dDocName=en022353

Over 100 times faster, far more memory, doesn't need any peripherals, will run the same code - and it's $2.

[turtlespeed 226]

My first was a trash 80 mc-10.

A whopping 4000 bit memory on board with a 16K upgrade available.

Fun Fun Fun

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[labrys 0]

Quote

Over 100 times faster, far more memory, doesn't need any peripherals, will run the same code - and it's $2.

Awesome

Owned by Remi #?

[AggieDave 6]

At first I was laughing because I read it as "Atair" but then I saw what you
had actually said. I get it, but my first computer was an Osborne executive, followed in a few years by an apple IIgs.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[Guest]

Bill....

That is TOTALLY AWESOME!!!

mh
.

"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."