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92-1012: The Altair 8800 had no built-in screen or video output, so it would have to be connected to a serial terminal (such as a VT100 -compatible terminal) to have any output. To connect it to a terminal a serial interface card had to be installed. Alternatively to using a terminal Altair could be programmed using its front-panel switches. While serving at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base , Ed Roberts and Forrest M. Mims III decided to use their electronics background to produce small kits for model rocket hobbyists. In 1969, Roberts and Mims, along with Stan Cagle and Robert Zaller, founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in Roberts' garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico , and started selling radio transmitters and instruments for model rockets. The model rocket kits were

184-409: A non-compete agreement with Pertec covering hardware products, so he became a gentleman farmer and started a software company. His age could have thwarted his dream of becoming a medical doctor, but nearby Mercer University started a medical school in 1982. Roberts was in the first class and graduated with an M.D. in 1986. He did his residency in internal medicine and in 1988 established a practice in

276-520: A wave soldering machine and an assembly line at the new location. In January 1972, Popular Electronics merged with another Ziff-Davis magazine, Electronics World . The change in editorial staff upset many of their authors, and they started writing for a competing magazine, Radio-Electronics . In 1972 and 1973, some of the best construction projects appeared in Radio-Electronics . In 1974, Art Salsberg became editor of Popular Electronics . It

368-460: A 132-column mode, and a variety of "graphic renditions" including blinking, bolding, reverse video , underlining, and lines of double-sized or double-width characters. The VT100 also introduced an additional box-drawing character set containing various pseudographics that allowed the drawing of on-screen forms. All configuration setup of the VT100 was accomplished using interactive displays presented on

460-508: A 4K static memory that was plug-in compatible with the Altair 8800 and sold for $ 255. His company was Processor Technology , one of the most successful Altair compatible board suppliers. Their advertisement in the July 1975 issue of Popular Electronics promised interface and PROM boards in addition to the 4K memory board. They would later develop a popular video display board that would plug directly into

552-516: A PDP-10 at Harvard to write and debug BASIC. They also enlisted another Harvard student, Monte Davidoff , to write the floating-point math routines. Paul Allen flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in March 1975 to test BASIC on a real Altair 8800 computer. Roberts picked him up at the airport in his pickup truck and drove to the nondescript storefront where MITS was located. Allen was not impressed. The Altair computer with 7 kB of memory that BASIC required

644-503: A commercial product. The school then implemented a policy that forced Gates to use a commercial time share service to work on BASIC. On July 22, 1975, MITS signed a contract for the Altair BASIC with Bill Gates and Paul Allen. They received $ 3,000 at signing and a royalty for each copy of BASIC sold, with a cap of $ 180,000. MITS received an exclusive worldwide license to the program for 10 years. They also had exclusive rights to sublicense

736-571: A commissioned officer. Roberts earned an electrical engineering degree from Oklahoma State University in 1968 and was assigned to the Laser Division of the Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico . In 1968, he looked into applying to medical school but learned that, at age 27, he was considered too old. Roberts worked with Forrest Mims at the Weapons Laboratory, and both shared an interest in model rocketry . Mims

828-557: A copy of the kit. The calculator was successful and was followed by several improved models. The MITS 1440 calculator was featured in the July 1973 issues of Radio-Electronics . It had a 14-digit display, memory, and square root function. The kit sold for $ 200 and the assembled version was $ 250 . MITS later developed a programmer unit that would connect to the 816 or 1440 calculator and allow programs of up to 256 steps. In 1972, Texas Instruments developed its own calculator chip and started selling complete calculators at less than half

920-514: A daughter Dawn (b. 1983). They were divorced in 1988. Roberts married Donna Mauldin in 1991 and they were still married when interviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in April 1997. He was married to Rosa Cooper from 2000 until his death. Roberts died April 1, 2010, after a months-long bout with pneumonia , at the age of 68. His sister, Cheryl R Roberts (b. November 13, 1947 – d. March 6, 2010), of nearby Dublin, Georgia , died at age 62,

1012-465: A decade, colleges had required science and engineering majors to take a course in computer programming, typically using the FORTRAN or BASIC languages. This meant there was a sizable customer base who knew about computers. In 1970, electronic calculators were not seen outside of a laboratory, but by 1974 they were a common household item. Calculators and video games like Pong introduced computer power to

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1104-511: A high level language for his computer. Roberts hired Allen as Vice President and Director of Software at MITS. Bill Gates also worked at MITS; the October 1975 company newsletter gives his title as "Software Specialist". Bill Gates remained at Harvard, but continued working on BASIC. Students were allowed to use the DEC PDP-10, but officials were not pleased when they found that Gates was developing

1196-474: A hundred kits. Mims was now out of the Air Force and wanted to pursue a career as a technology writer. Roberts bought out his original partners and focused the company on the emerging market of electronic calculators. Roberts's first real experience with computers came while at Oklahoma State University where engineering students had free access to an IBM 1620 computer. His office at the Weapons Laboratory had

1288-556: A kit. The first 50 IMSAI computers shipped in December 1975. The IMSAI 8080 computer improved on the original Altair design in several areas. It was easier to assemble: The Altair required 60 wire connections between the front panel and the motherboard ( backplane ). The IMSAI required only two soldered connections between the front panel and power supply. The MITS motherboard consisted of 4 slot segments that had to be connected together with 100 wires. The IMSAI motherboard implemented 22 slots on

1380-417: A larger building with 10,000 square feet (930 square meters) of space. In 1973, MITS was selling every calculator that they could make, and 110 employees worked in two shifts assembling them. The functionality of calculator integrated circuits increased at a rapid pace and Roberts was designing and producing new models. The popularity of electronic calculators drew the traditional office equipment companies and

1472-620: A letter to its sales force stating that the MITS Altair 8800 computer used standard Intel 8080 parts. The sales force should sell the Intellec system based on its merits and that no one should make derogatory comments about valued customers like MITS. The letter was reprinted in the August 1975 issue of MITS Computer Notes. The "cosmetic defect" rumor has appeared in many accounts over the years although both MITS and Intel issued written denials in 1975. For

1564-500: A modest success and MITS wanted to try a kit that would appeal to more hobbyists. The November 1970 issue of Popular Electronics featured the Opticom, a kit from MITS that would send voice over an LED light beam. As Mims and Cagle were losing interest in the kit business, Roberts bought his partners out, then began developing a calculator kit. Electronic Arrays had just announced the EAS100,

1656-399: A neurosurgeon who shared his interest in electronics. The doctor suggested that Roberts get an engineering degree before applying to medical school, and Roberts changed his major to electrical engineering . Roberts married Joan Clark while at the university, and when she became pregnant Roberts knew that he would have to drop out of school to support his new family. The U.S. Air Force had

1748-516: A new hit product. Roberts decided to return to the kit market with a low cost computer. The target customer would think that "some assembly required" was a desirable feature. In April 1974, Intel released the 8080 microprocessor that Roberts felt was powerful enough for his computer kit, but each 8080 chip sold for $ 360 in small quantities. Roberts felt that the price of a computer kit had to be under $ 400; to meet this price, he agreed to order 1,000 microprocessors from Intel for $ 75 each. The company

1840-508: A number of extended codes for special features like controlling the status lights on the keyboard. This led to rapid uptake of the ANSI standard, which became the de facto standard for hardware video terminals and later terminal emulators . The VT100 series, especially the VT102, was extremely successful in the market, and made DEC the leading terminal vendor at the time. The VT100 series was replaced by

1932-558: A paper tape Bill Gates had created just before Allen left Boston. It took almost 15 minutes for the Teletype to load the program into the Altair then the Teletype printed "MEMORY SIZE?" Allen entered 7168 and the Teletype printed "READY". Both Allen and Roberts were stunned their software and hardware actually worked. They entered several small programs and they worked. The BASIC interpreter was not complete and crashed several times, but Roberts had

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2024-642: A program that would pay for college, and in May 1962 he enlisted with the hope of finishing his degree through the Airman Education & Commissioning Program . After basic training, Roberts attended the Cryptographic Equipment Maintenance School at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas . Because of his electrical engineering studies at college, Roberts was made an instructor at

2116-450: A reasonable price. The introduction of low-cost microprocessors and the ever-falling cost of computer memory offered greatly expanded capabilities, and the VT100 used the new Intel 8080 as its internal processor . In addition, the VT100 provided backwards compatibility for VT52-compatible software, by also supporting the older control sequences. Other improvements beyond the VT52 included

2208-416: A self-made simulator for the 8080 on a PDP-10 mainframe computer . They figured that they had 30 days before someone else beat them to the punch, and once they had a version working on the simulator, Allen flew to Albuquerque to deliver the program, Altair BASIC (aka MITS 4K BASIC), on a paper tape . The first time it was run, it displayed "READY", then Allen typed "PRINT 2+2", and it immediately printed

2300-529: A serial interface board and at least one or two 4096 word memory boards, depending on the language variant. MITS Price List, Popular Electronics , August 1975. MITS had no competition in the US for the first half of 1975. Their 4K memory board used dynamic RAM and it had several design problems. The delay in shipping optional boards and the problems with the 4K memory board created an opportunity for outside suppliers. An enterprising Altair owner, Robert Marsh, designed

2392-467: A set of six large scale integrated (LSI) circuit chips that would make a four-function calculator. The MITS 816 calculator kit used the chipset and was featured on the November 1971 cover of Popular Electronics . This calculator kit sold for $ 175 , or $ 275 assembled. Forrest Mims wrote the assembly manual for this kit and many others over the next several years. As payment for each manual he often accepted

2484-536: A single segment. The IMSAI replaced the Altair's one-shot clock generator with the Intel 8224. The IMSAI also had a larger power supply to handle the increasing number of expansion boards used in typical systems. The IMSAI advantage was short lived because MITS had recognized these shortcomings and developed the Altair 8800B, which was introduced in June 1976. In 1977, Pertec Computer Corporation purchased MITS and began to market

2576-656: A small-town doctor living in Cochran, Georgia. Roberts was born on September 13, 1941, in Miami, Florida , to Henry Melvin Roberts, an appliance repairman, and Edna Wilcher Roberts, a registered nurse. His younger sister Cheryl was born in 1947. During World War II, while his father was in the Army, Roberts and his mother lived on the Wilcher family farm in Wheeler County, Georgia . After the war,

2668-520: A two-piece case. The backplane and power supply were mounted on a base plate, along with the front and rear of the box. The "lid" was shaped like a C, forming the top, left, and right sides of the box. The front panel , which was inspired by the Data General Nova minicomputer, included a large number of toggle switches to feed binary data directly into the memory of the machine, and a number of red LEDs to read those values back out. Programming

2760-498: A very slow disk drive. The VT180 (codenamed "Robin") added a single-board microcomputer using a Zilog Z80 to run the CP/M operating system. The VT278 (DECmate) added a small PDP-8 processor, allowing the terminal to run Digital's WPS-8 word processing software. Ed Roberts (computer engineer) Henry Edward Roberts (September 13, 1941 – April 1, 2010) was an American engineer, entrepreneur and medical doctor who invented

2852-480: Is that the Altair was originally going to be named the PE-8 (Popular Electronics 8-bit), but Les Solomon thought this name to be rather dull, so Les, Alexander Burawa (associate editor), and John McVeigh (technical editor) decided that: "It's a stellar event, so let's name it after a star." McVeigh suggested " Altair ", the twelfth brightest star in the sky. Ed Roberts had designed and manufactured programmable calculators and

Altair 8800 - Misplaced Pages Continue

2944-508: The BASIC programming language for the machine. He called the company and reached a private home, where no one had heard of anything like BASIC. In fact the letter had been sent by Bill Gates and Paul Allen from the Boston area, and they had no BASIC yet to offer. When they called Roberts to follow up on the letter he expressed his interest, and the two started work on their BASIC interpreter using

3036-546: The Intellec-8 Microprocessor Development System that typically sold for a very profitable $ 10,000 . It was functionally similar to the Altair 8800 but it was a commercial grade system with a wide selection of peripherals and development software. Customers would ask Intel why their Intellec-8 was so expensive when that Altair was only $ 400 . Some salesmen said that MITS was getting cosmetic rejects or otherwise inferior chips. In July 1975, Intel sent

3128-479: The Railway Express Agency . However, it never arrived due to a strike by the shipping company. Solomon already had a number of pictures of the machine and the article was based on them. Roberts got to work on building a replacement. The computer on the magazine cover is an empty box with just switches and LEDs on the front panel. The finished Altair computer had a completely different circuit board layout than

3220-664: The VT200 series starting in 1983, which proved equally successful. Ultimately, over six million terminals in the VT series were sold, based largely on the success of the VT100. DEC's first video terminal was the VT05 (1970), succeeded by the VT50 (1974), and soon upgraded to the VT52 (1975). The VT52 featured a text display with 80 columns and 24 rows, bidirectional scrolling, and a custom control protocol that allowed

3312-504: The Altair name, which editor Les Solomon later told the audience at the first Altair Computer Convention (March 1976), is that the name was inspired by Les's 12-year-old daughter, Lauren. "She said why don't you call it Altair – that's where the Enterprise is going tonight." The Star Trek episode is probably " Amok Time ", as this is the only one from The Original Series which takes the Enterprise crew to Altair (Six). Another explanation

3404-458: The Altair via the front panel could be a tedious and time-consuming process. Programming required the toggling of the switches to positions corresponding to the desired 8080 microprocessor instruction or opcode in binary, then used the "DEPOSIT NEXT" switch to load that instruction into the next address of the machine's memory. This step was repeated until all the opcodes of a presumably complete and correct program were in place. The only output from

3496-531: The Altair. A consulting company in San Leandro, California, IMS Associates, Inc. , wanted to purchase several Altair computers, but the long delivery time convinced them that they should build their own computers. In the October 1975 issue of Popular Electronics , a small advertisement announced the IMSAI 8080 computer. The ad noted that all boards were " plug compatible " with the Altair 8800. The computer cost $ 439 as

3588-544: The CRT on the terminal itself. This board is responsible for adjusting the CRT in the case that the electron beam is offset. The terminal controller board is what handles the terminal logic, and includes a multitude of chips such as DEC's rebranding of the Intel 8080. In 1983, the VT100 was replaced by the more powerful VT200 series terminals such as the VT220 . The VT100 has various third party and first party boards designed to enhance

3680-600: The Canadian company Micro Computer Machines); the National Semiconductor IMP-8 and IMP-16 required external hardware; the Motorola 6800 was still in development. So he chose the 8-bit Intel 8080 . At that time, Intel's main business was selling memory chips by the thousands to computer companies. They had no experience in selling small quantities of microprocessors. When the 8080 was introduced in April 1974, Intel set

3772-615: The Cryptographic School when he finished the course. To augment his meager enlisted man's pay, Roberts worked on several off-duty projects and even set up a one-man company, Reliance Engineering. The most notable job was to create the electronics that animated the Christmas characters in the window display of Joske's department store in San Antonio. In 1965, he was selected for an Air Force program to complete his college degree and become

Altair 8800 - Misplaced Pages Continue

3864-488: The DEC Macro Assembler to produce code for the Intel 8080 and wrote a program to emulate the 8080 so they could test their BASIC without having an Altair computer. Using DEC's BASIC-PLUS language as a guide, Gates determined what features would work with the limited resources of the Altair computer. Gates then started writing the 8080 assembly-language code on yellow legal pads. In February Gates and Allen started using

3956-509: The January issue of Popular Electronics , MITS was flooded with inquiries and orders. They had to hire extra people just to answer the phones. In February MITS received 1,000 orders for the Altair 8800. The quoted delivery time was 60 days but it was months before they could meet that. Roberts focused on delivering the computer; all of the options would wait until they could keep pace with the orders. MITS claimed to have delivered 2,500 Altair 8800s by

4048-486: The January launch date. So during the construction of the second model, he decided to build most of the machine on removable cards, reducing the motherboard to nothing more than an interconnect between the cards, a backplane . The basic machine consisted of five cards, including the CPU on one and memory on another. He then looked for a cheap source of connectors and came across a supply of 100-pin edge connectors . The S-100 bus

4140-425: The July 1974 cover of Radio-Electronics . The computer trainer was put on hold and the editors looked for a real computer system. ( Popular Electronics gave Jerry Ogden a column, Computer Bits , starting in June 1975.) One of the editors, Les Solomon, knew MITS was working on an Intel 8080 based computer project and thought Roberts could provide the project for the always popular January issue. The TV Typewriter and

4232-555: The Mark-8 computer projects were just a detailed set of plans and a set of bare printed circuit boards. The hobbyist faced the daunting task of acquiring all of the integrated circuits and other components. The editors of Popular Electronics wanted a complete kit in a professional-looking enclosure. Ed Roberts and his head engineer, Bill Yates, finished the first prototype in October 1974 and shipped it to Popular Electronics in New York via

4324-451: The byte-efficient Remote Graphic Instruction Set ( ReGIS ), which used custom ANSI codes to send graphics commands to the terminal, rather than requiring the terminal to be set to a separate less-efficient graphics mode like the VT105. The VT131 added block mode support, allowing a form to be sent to the terminal and filled in locally by the user, and then sending the contents of the fields in

4416-656: The capabilities of the device. Most notable of these from DEC themselves are the VT1XX-AB (Advanced Video Option) and the VT1XX-AA (20 mA Current Loop Option). The cards' capabilities and existence are described in Chapter 4 of the VT100 User Guide. The VT100 was the first of Digital's terminals to be based on an industry-standard microprocessor, the Intel 8080 . Options could be added to

4508-561: The company deeply in debt by 1974. Roberts then developed the Altair 8800 personal computer that used the new Intel 8080 microprocessor. This was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics , and hobbyists flooded MITS with orders for this $ 397 computer kit. Bill Gates and Paul Allen joined MITS to develop software and Altair BASIC was Microsoft's first product. Roberts sold MITS in 1977 and retired to Georgia where he farmed, studied medicine and eventually became

4600-423: The computer time, Roberts felt it was his software. In 1976, MITS had 230 employees and sales of $ 6 million. Roberts was tiring of his management responsibilities and was looking for a larger partner. MITS had always used Pertec Computer Corporation disk drives and on December 3, 1976, Pertec signed a letter of intent to acquire MITS for $ 6 million in stock. The deal was completed in May 1977 and Roberts' share

4692-478: The computer, without changes (except for branding), as the PCC 8800 in 1978. In the first design of the Altair, the parts needed to make a complete machine would not fit on a single motherboard , and the machine consisted of four boards stacked on top of each other with stand-offs. Another problem facing Roberts was that the parts needed to make a truly useful computer were not available, or would not be designed in time for

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4784-451: The computers. Prompt delivery of optional boards did not occur until October 1975. There were several design and component problems in the MITS 4K Dynamic RAM board. By July, new companies such as Processor Technology were selling 4K Static RAM boards with the promise of reliable operation. Ed Roberts acknowledged the 4K Dynamic RAM board problems in the October 1975 Computer Notes . The price

4876-460: The correct answer: "4". The game Lunar Lander was entered in, and this worked as well. Gates soon joined Allen and formed Microsoft , then spelled "Micro-Soft". Announced in late 1975, it started shipping in August 1977. VT100 The VT100 is a video terminal , introduced in August 1978 by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It was one of the first terminals to support ANSI escape codes for cursor control and other tasks, and added

4968-558: The cover of Popular Electronics . They had previously written software for the earlier Intel 8008 microprocessor and knew the Intel 8080 was powerful enough to support a BASIC interpreter. They sent a letter to MITS claiming to have a BASIC interpreter for the 8080 microprocessor. Roberts was interested, so Gates and Allen began work on the software. Both had experience with the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-10 minicomputers that they would use. Allen modified

5060-631: The cursor to be moved about the screen. These "smart terminals" were a hit due both to their capabilities and to their ability to be run over inexpensive serial links, rather than custom proprietary connections as in the case of systems like the IBM 3270 , which generally required expensive controllers for distributed applications. In contrast, "dumb terminals" or "glass teletypes" like the ADM-3A (1976) lacked advanced features such as full cursor addressability, and competed mostly on lowest possible hardware cost. The VT100

5152-430: The end of May. The number was over 5,000 by August 1975. MITS had under 20 employees in January but had grown to 90 by October 1975. The Altair 8800 computer was a break-even sale for MITS. They needed to sell additional memory boards, I/O boards and other options to make a profit. The system came with a "1024 word" (1024 byte) memory board populated with 256 bytes. The BASIC language was announced in July 1975 and required

5244-550: The family returned to Miami, but Roberts would spend his summers with his grandparents in rural Georgia . Roberts' father had an appliance repair business in Miami. Roberts became interested in electronics and built a small relay-based computer while in high school. Medicine was his true passion, however, and he entered the University of Miami with the intention of becoming a doctor, the first in his family to attend college. There he met

5336-542: The first commercially successful personal computer in 1974. He is most often known as " the father of the personal computer ." Roberts founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in 1970 to sell electronics kits to model rocketry hobbyists, but the first successful product was an electronic calculator kit that was featured on the cover of the November 1971 issue of Popular Electronics . The calculators were very successful and sales topped one million dollars in 1973. A brutal calculator price war left

5428-490: The form back to the host when the form is filled in. The VT100 form factor left significant physical space in the case for expansion, and DEC used this to produce several all-in-one stand-alone minicomputer systems. The VT103 included a cardcage and 4×4 (8-slot) Q-Bus backplane, sufficient to configure a small 16-bit LSI-11 microcomputer system within the case, and supported an optional dual TU58 DECtape II block-addressable cartridge tape drive which could be used like

5520-442: The general public. Electronics hobbyists were moving on to digital projects such as digital voltmeters and frequency counters. The Altair had enough power to be actually useful, and was designed as an expandable system that opened it up to all sorts of applications. Ed Roberts optimistically told his banker that he could sell 800 computers, while in reality they needed to sell 200 over the next year just to break even. When readers got

5612-546: The magazine cover was an empty box with just switches and LEDs on the front panel. The finished Altair computer had a completely different circuit board layout than the prototype shown in the magazine. MITS products typically had generic names such as the Model 1440 Calculator or the Model 1600 Digital Voltmeter . The editors of Popular Electronics wanted a more alluring name for the computer. MITS technical writer David Bunnell came up with three pages of possible names, but Roberts

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5704-547: The new company Reliance Engineering, but Mims wanted to form an acronym similar to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's MIT. Cagle came up with Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS). They advertised the light flasher, a roll rate sensor with transmitter, and other kits in Model Rocketry , but the sales were disappointing. Mims wrote an article about the new technology of light-emitting diodes that

5796-502: The price of other commercial models. MITS and many other companies were devastated by this, and Roberts struggled to reduce his quarter-million-dollar debt. In addition to calculators, MITS made a line of test equipment kits. These included an IC tester, a waveform generator, a digital voltmeter, and several other instruments. To keep up with the demand, MITS moved into a larger building at 6328 Linn NE in Albuquerque in 1973. They installed

5888-443: The program to other companies and agreed to use its "best efforts" to license, promote and commercialize the program. MITS would supply the computer time necessary for development on a PDP-10 owned by the Albuquerque school district . MITS realized that BASIC was a competitive advantage and bundled the software with computer hardware sales. Customers who purchased the computer, memory, and I/O boards from MITS could get BASIC for $ 75;

5980-416: The programs was the patterns of lights on the panel. Nevertheless, many were sold in this form. Development was already underway on additional cards, including a paper tape reader for storage, additional RAM cards, and an RS-232 interface to connect to a proper teletype terminal . Ed Roberts received a letter from Traf-O-Data asking whether he would be interested in buying what would eventually be

6072-558: The project with time and money. The first product was a "four-function" calculator that could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. The display was only eight digits, but the calculations were performed with 16 digits precision. The MITS Model 816 calculator kit was featured on the November 1971 cover of Popular Electronics . The kit sold for $ 179 and an assembled unit was $ 275. Unlike the previous kits that MITS had offered, thousands of calculator orders came in each month. The monthly sales reached $ 100,000 in March 1973, and MITS moved to

6164-408: The project would be complete by November to meet the press deadline for the January 1975 issue. The first prototype was finished in October and shipped to Popular Electronics in New York for the cover photograph, but it was lost in transit. Solomon already had a number of pictures of the machine, and the article was based on them. Roberts and Yates got to work on building a replacement. The computer on

6256-448: The prototype shown in the magazine. The January 1975 issues appeared on newsstands a week before Christmas of 1974 and the kit was officially (if not yet practically) available for sale. The typical MITS product had a generic name like the " Model 1440 Calculator " or the " Model 1600 Digital Voltmeter ". Ed Roberts was busy finishing the design and left the naming of the computer to the editors of Popular Electronics . One explanation of

6348-427: The screen; the setup data was stored in non-volatile memory within the terminal. Maintainability was also significantly improved, since a VT100 could be quickly dismantled into replaceable modules. The VT100's internal layout can be split into two boards for functionality, not including the VT100's optional boards you can purchase. There is a board called the video monitor board which is used for things like adjusting

6440-462: The semiconductor companies into the market. In September 1972, Texas Instruments (TI) introduced the TI-2500 portable four-function calculator that sold for $ 120. The larger companies could sell below cost to win market share. By early 1974, Ed Roberts found that he could purchase a calculator in a retail store for less than his cost of materials. MITS was now $ 300,000 in debt, and Roberts was looking for

6532-413: The single unit price at $ 360 ($ 2220 in 2023). "That figure had a nice ring to it," recalled Intel's Dave House in 1984. "Besides, it was a computer, and they usually cost thousands of dollars, so we felt it was a reasonable price." Ed Roberts had experience in buying OEM quantities of calculator chips and he was able to negotiate a $ 75 price ($ 460 in 2023) for the 8080 microprocessor chips. Intel made

6624-460: The small town of Cochran, Georgia . In 2009, Dr. Roberts was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha , the medical honor society. He was nominated by Mercer alumnus Guy Foulkes, MD based on Roberts’ dual accomplishment of developer of the first personal computer and his devotion to rural medicine. Roberts married Joan Clark (b. 1941) in 1962 and they had five sons, Melvin (b. 1963), Clark (b. 1964), John David (b. 1965), Edward (b. 1970), Martin (b. 1975) and

6716-471: The standalone price was $ 500. Many hobbyists purchased their hardware from a third-party and "borrowed" a copy of Altair BASIC. Roberts refused to sub-license BASIC to other companies; this led to arbitration in 1977 between MITS and the new "Micro-Soft". The arbitrator agreed with Microsoft and allowed them to license the 8080 BASIC to other companies. Roberts was disappointed with this ruling. Since both Allen and Gates had been employees of MITS and he paid for

6808-399: The state of the art Hewlett-Packard 9100A programmable calculator in 1968. Roberts had always wanted to build a digital computer and, in July 1970, Electronic Arrays announced a set of six LSI integrated circuits that would make a four-function calculator. Roberts was determined to design a calculator kit and got fellow Weapons Laboratory officers William Yates and Ed Laughlin to invest in

6900-501: The terminal to support an external printer, additional graphic renditions, and more character memory. The last option, known as the "Advanced Video Option" or AVO, allowed the terminal to support a full 24 lines of text in 132-column mode, increasing from the 14 lines of the unexpanded model when used in 132-column mode. The VT100 became a platform on which Digital constructed several related hardware products. The VT101 and VT102 were cost-reduced, non-expandable follow-on versions. The VT101

6992-451: The text, although it somewhat slowed down the maximum data rate. The major internal change was the control protocol. Unlike the VT50/52's proprietary cursor control language, the VT100 was based on the newly emerging ANSI X3.64 standard for command codes. At the time, some computer vendors had suggested that the new standard was beyond the state of the art and could not be implemented at

7084-467: The twelfth-brightest star in the sky. When the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics reached readers in mid-December 1974, MITS was flooded with orders. They had to hire extra people just to answer the phones. In February, MITS received 1,000 orders for the Altair 8800 . The quoted delivery time was 60 days, but it was many more months before the machines were shipped. By August 1975, they had shipped over 5,000 computers. The Altair 8800 computer

7176-592: Was $ 2–3 million. The Altair products were merged into the Pertec line, and the MITS facility was used to produce the PCC-2000 small-business computer. The Albuquerque plant was closed in December 1980 and the production was moved to the Pertec plants in Irvine, California. In late 1977 Roberts returned to rural Georgia and bought a large farm in Wheeler County where he had often visited his grandparents' home in his youth. He had

7268-480: Was Salsberg's goal to reclaim the lead in electronics projects. He was impressed with Don Lancaster 's TV Typewriter ( Radio Electronics , September 1973) article and wanted computer projects for Popular Electronics . Don Lancaster did an ASCII keyboard for Popular Electronics in April 1974. They were evaluating a computer trainer project by Jerry Ogden when the Mark-8 8008 -based computer by Jonathan Titus appeared on

7360-426: Was a break-even sale for MITS. They needed to sell additional memory boards, I/O boards, and other options to make a profit. The April 1975 issue of the MITS newsletter Computer Notes had a page-long price list that offered over 15 optional boards. The delivery time given was 60 or 90 days, but many items were never produced and dropped from future price lists. Initially, Roberts decided to concentrate on production of

7452-560: Was an advisor to the Albuquerque Model Rocket Club and met the publisher of Model Rocketry magazine at a rocketry conference. This led to an article in the September 1969 issue of Model Rocketry , "Transistorized Tracking Light for Night Launched Model Rockets". Roberts, Mims, and lab coworkers Stan Cagle and Bob Zaller decided that they could design and sell electronics kits to model rocket hobbyists. Roberts wanted to call

7544-463: Was down to 20 employees and a bank loan for $ 65,000 financed the design and initial production of the new computer. Roberts told the bank that he expected to sell 800 computers, but he guessed that it would be around 200. Art Salsberg, editorial director of Popular Electronics , was looking for a computer construction project, and his technical editor Les Solomon knew that MITS was working on an Intel 8080-based computer kit. Roberts assured Solomon that

7636-547: Was essentially a base-model VT100, while the VT102 came standard with the AVO and serial printer port options pre-installed. The VT105 contained a simple graphics subsystem known as waveform graphics which was mostly compatible with same system in the earlier VT55 . This system allowed two mathematical functions to be drawn to the screen superimposed over the normal text display, allowing text and graphics to be mixed to produce charts and similar output. The VT125 added an implementation of

7728-450: Was eventually acknowledged by the professional computer community and adopted as the IEEE-696 computer bus standard. The Altair bus consists of the pins of the Intel 8080 run out onto the backplane. No particular level of thought went into the design, which led to disasters such as shorting from various power lines of differing voltages being located next to each other. Another oddity

7820-571: Was familiar with the microprocessors available in 1974. He thought the Intel 4004 and Intel 8008 were not powerful enough (in fact several microcomputers based on Intel chips were already on the market: the Canadian company Microsystems International 's CPS-1 built-in 1972 used a MIL MF7114 chip modeled on the 4004, the Micral marketed in January 1973 by the French company R2E and the MCM/70 marketed in 1974 by

7912-540: Was introduced in August 1978, replacing the VT50/VT52 family. Like the earlier models, it communicated with its host system over serial lines at a minimum speed of 50 bit/s, but increased the maximum speed to 19,200 bit/s, double that of the VT52. The terminal provided an option for "smooth scrolling", whereby displayed lines of text were moved gradually up or down the screen to make room for new lines, instead of advancing in sudden "jumps". This made it easier to scan or read

8004-433: Was not born until 1983. Both of these versions have appeared in many books, magazines, and web sites. Editor Alexander Burawa recalls a less dramatic version. The Altair was originally going to be named the PE-8 (Popular Electronics 8-bit), but Les Solomon thought this name to be rather dull, so Solomon, Burawa, and John McVeigh decided that: "It's a stellar event, so let's name it after a star." McVeigh suggested " Altair ",

8096-399: Was reduced from $ 264 to $ 195 and existing purchasers got a $ 50 refund. MITS released its own 4K Static RAM board in January 1976. Several other companies started making add-in boards and the first clone, the IMSAI 8080 , was available in December 1975. Bill Gates was a student at Harvard University and Paul Allen worked for Honeywell in Boston when they saw the Altair computer on

8188-408: Was still being tested and would not be ready until the next day. Roberts had booked Allen in the most expensive hotel in Albuquerque and the room was $ 40 more than Allen brought with him. Roberts paid for the room and wondered who is this software guy who can not afford a room in a hotel. The next day the Altair with 7 kB had finally passed its memory test and Allen had their BASIC interpreter on

8280-528: Was that the system included two unidirectional 8-bit data buses , when the normal practice was for a single bidirectional bus (this oddity did, however, allow a later expansion of the S-100 standard to 16 bits bidirectional by using both 8-bit buses in parallel). A deal on power supplies led to the use of +8  V and ±18 V, which had to be locally regulated on the cards to TTL (+5 V) or RS-232 (±12 V) standard voltage levels. The Altair shipped in

8372-475: Was to be published in the November 1970 issue of Popular Electronics magazine. He asked the editors if they also wanted a project story, and they agreed. Roberts and Mims developed an LED communicator that would transmit voice on an infrared beam of light to a receiver hundreds of feet away. Readers could buy a kit of parts to build the Opticom LED Communicator from MITS for $ 15. MITS sold just over

8464-523: Was too busy finishing the computer design to choose one. There are several versions of the story of who selected Altair as the computer name. At the first Altair Computer Convention (March 1976), Les Solomon told the audience that the name was inspired by his 12-year-old daughter Lauren. "She said why don't you call it Altair – that's where the [Star Trek] Enterprise is going tonight." The December 1976 issue of Popular Science misquoted this account, giving credit to Ed Roberts' daughter. His only daughter Dawn

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