MITS Altair 8800 Computer - The Dawn of the Microcomputing Age

The Altair was the first truly successful home computer, introduced in 1975. Its newly developed Intel 8080 microprocessor was intended as an industrial controller for elevators and traffic lights but proved ideal as the brains for a home machine. In actuality, most Altairs incorporated the improved 8080A processor. The price was a reasonable $595, although the system offered nothing more than a front panel of blinking lights and toggle switches at that price, along with a meagre 256 bytes of memory. An optional video card offered 64 character by 12 row text output in UPPER CASE ONLY. You could also connect the machine to a serial terminal, assuming you had one kicking around your research lab.

The company went on to produce the more professional looking Altair 8080B in 1976, as well as a Motorola 6800-based machine called the Altair 680 in late 1975. The clock speed of the 680 was a mere 500 kHz – just about the slowest machine I’ve ever stumbled across.

Incidentally, the first microcomputer BASIC was written for the Altair 8080 by Paul Allen, Monte Davidoff and Bill Gates. Allen served as the company’s Associate Director of Software for a short while, dividing his time between MITS and a little company he co-founded with Gates called Micro Soft.

In the end, MITS earned a reputation for releasing faulty hardware, ultimately leading to the company’s collapse.

More on the MITS Altair 8800 (Erik Klein's brilliant Vintage Computers site)