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93-459: The design was originally suggested by Les Solomon, the editor of Popular Electronics . He asked Bob Marsh of Processor Technology if he could design a smart terminal for use with the Altair 8800 . Lee Felsenstein , who shared a garage working space with Marsh, had previously designed such a terminal but never built it. Reconsidering the design using modern electronics, they agreed the best solution

186-534: A BASIC interpreter for the Altair computer and started Microsoft . Radio & Television News was a magazine for professionals and the editors wanted to create a magazine for hobbyists. Ziff-Davis had started Popular Aviation in 1927 and Popular Photography in 1934 but found that Gernsback Publications had the trademark on Popular Electronics. It was used in Radio-Craft from 1943 until 1948. Ziff-Davis bought

279-551: A SDS 940 mainframe that was accessed through a Teletype Model 33 , essentially a computer printer and keyboard, in a record store in Berkeley, California . The cost of running the system was untenable; the teletype normally cost $ 1,500 (their first example was donated from Tymshare as junk), the modem another $ 300 , and time on the SDS was expensive – in 1968, Tymshare charged $ 13 per hour (equivalent to $ 114 in 2023). Even

372-448: A computer terminal and a modem a user could dial into a large multi-user computer. Lee Felsenstein wanted make low-cost versions of modems and terminals available to the hobbyist. The March 1976 issue had the " Pennywhistle Modem " and the July 1976 issue had the "SOL Intelligent Terminal". The SOL, built by Processor Technology , was really an Altair compatible computer and became one of

465-563: A printed circuit board . They would often contain components that were not available at the local electronics parts store. Dan Meyer saw the business opportunity in providing circuit boards and parts for the Popular Electronics projects. In January 1964 he left Southwest Research Institute to start an electronics kit company. He continued to write articles and ran the mail order kit business from his home in San Antonio, Texas. By 1965 he

558-419: A sans-serif typeface in a rectangular box. The covers featured a large image of the feature story, usually a construction project. In September 1970 the cover logo was changed to an underlined serif typeface. The magazine's content, typography and layout were also updated. In January 1972 the cover logo added a second line, "including Electronics World", and the volume number was restarted at 1. This second line

651-507: A PH meter to locate the source of pollution in a river. As Editor, Olivier Ferrell built a stable of authors who contributed interesting construction projects. These projects established the style of Popular Electronics for years to come. Two of the most prolific authors were Daniel Meyer and Don Lancaster. Daniel Meyer graduated from Southwest Texas State (1957) and became an engineer at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. He soon started writing hobbyist articles. The first

744-587: A Swedish businessman named Mats Ingemanson and brought to market the Micro Expander , seen as the spiritual successor to the Sol-20. Looking at the Sol-20 from the front, where the operator would sit, the keyboard was in a typical location with the main QWERTY-style layout on the left and the numeric keypad on the right. The wooden sides of the case were close on either side of the keyboard, potentially interfering with

837-452: A color video card. Additionally, dealers could now order 30 days net, as opposed to cash-on-delivery, although to do so they had to put in orders at least once a quarter. These plans quickly fell apart. The Helios was initially based on a new mechanism from Diablo Data Systems . Diablo had been purchased by Xerox in 1972, and shortly after the Helios was announced, Xerox canceled development of

930-401: A column on a fictional repair shop where the proprietor, Mac, would interact with other technicians and customers. The reader would learn repair techniques for servicing radios and TVs. In Popular Electronics his column was about two high school boys, Carl and Jerry. Each month the boys would have an adventure that would teach the reader about electronics. By 1954 building audio and radio kits

1023-421: A common ground, a topic of considerable derision by many users. When the bus was extended into a ribbon cable, the resulting signals were too noisy to be useful, and Marsh demanded that there be additional ground pins spread across the cable to reduce this noise. The Sol solved this problem by supporting only one of the two data busses at a time, allowing input or output and switching between them by signaling with

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1116-431: A computer, simply replied "beats me". When they powered it up the machine would not work, displaying unreadably fuzzy images. Marsh and Felsenstein then flew to Boston to visit the offices of the newly started Byte magazine. While there, Felsenstein had time to discover the problem was a tiny bit of broken wire that got stuck under a chip, shorting out two of the video lines. They returned to Solomon's house to demonstrate

1209-484: A day from 1800 square feet (1,700 m ) of buildings. Others noticed SWTPC success. Forrest Mims , a founder of MITS (Altair 8800), tells about his " Light-Emitting Diodes " cover story ( Popular Electronics , November 1970) in an interview with Creative Computing . In March, I sold my first article to Popular Electronics magazine, a feature about light-emitting diodes. At one of our midnight meetings I suggested that we emulate Southwest Technical Products and develop

1302-573: A dealer network among some of the earliest computer stores. By 1977, Processor Technology had a reputation for quality and was among the best-selling computers in the world. By this time, S-100 machines were beginning to make inroads into business markets. Processor Technology invited all of their dealers to a meeting in Emeryville, California , outside Berkeley, to introduce their Helios floppy disk drive for $ 1,199 , along with their PTDOS system to work with it. They also promised larger memory cards and

1395-472: A full range of construction projects using the newest technologies such as microprocessors and other programmable devices. In November 1982 the magazine became Computers & Electronics . There were more equipment reviews and fewer construction projects. One of the last major projects was a bidirectional analog-to-digital converter for the Apple II computer published in July and August 1983. Art Salsberg left at

1488-418: A heart attack. In 1982, Ziff was diagnosed with prostate cancer so he asked his three sons (ages 14 to 20) if they wanted to run a publishing empire. They did not. Ziff wanted to simplify the estate by selling some of the magazines. In November 1984, CBS bought the consumer group for $ 362.5 million and Rupert Murdoch bought the business group for $ 350 million. This left Ziff-Davis with the computer group and

1581-572: A low cost video display. In July 1974 Radio-Electronics published the Mark-8 Personal Minicomputer based on the Intel 8008 processor. The publishers noted the success of Radio-Electronics and Arthur P. Salsberg took over as Editor in 1974. Salsberg and Technical Editor, Leslie Solomon, brought back the featured construction projects. Popular Electronics needed a computer project so they selected Ed Roberts' Altair 8800 computer based on

1674-482: A post on Community Memory by Bob Marsh asking if anyone would like to share a garage. Marsh was designing a fancy wood-cased digital clock and needed space to work on it. Felsenstein had previously met Marsh at school and agreed to split the $ 175 rent on a garage in Berkeley. Shortly after, Community Memory shut down for the last time, having burned out the relationship with its primary funding source, Project One , as well

1767-492: A project article for Popular Electronics. The article would give us free advertising for the kit version of the project, and the magazine would even pay us for the privilege of printing it! The November 1970 issue also has an article by Forrest M. Mims and Henry E. Roberts titled "Assemble an LED Communicator - The Opticon." A kit of parts could be ordered from MITS in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Popular Electronics paid $ 400 for

1860-409: A sense, then, Modern Electronics is the successor to the original concept of Popular Electronics … The last issue of Computers & Electronics was April 1985. The magazine still had 600,000 readers but the intense competition from other computer magazines resulted in flat advertising revenues. In 1953, William B. Ziff, Jr. (age 23) was thrust into the publishing business when his father died of

1953-454: A single motherboard with the 8080, a simplified version of the VDM-1, serial input/output, and 1k of SRAM for the screen buffer. A ROM , the "personality module", would include the terminal driver or other code which would begin running as soon as the machine was turned on. The module was designed so it could be removed or inserted without accessing the interior of the machine. Marsh, meanwhile,

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2046-571: A single father, raising his daughter Irene Moore, born 1968. He married Julie Kiser in 1992, and they had a daughter Mira Moore, born 1993. Moore died in an automobile accident in 1997. Fred Moore attended the 1971 demise party for the Whole Earth Catalog . The purpose of the demise party was to decide how to give away the remaining profits from the publication of the Whole Earth Catalog, $ 20,000 in cash. Fred Moore eventually received

2139-458: A two-day hunger strike on campus against the compulsory Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program, attracting media attention and influencing later activists of the student movement of the 1960s. After the 1980 reinstitution of draft registration in the United States, Moore became a leader in the draft resistance movement, for a time editing the newspaper, Resistance News . Moore was

2232-487: A version using the Intel 8080 . It quickly became apparent the difference in cost would only be about $ 10, and from then on the original dedicated terminal concept was dropped. Over time the plans changed, and at some point, Marsh told Felsenstein "We want you to design a computer around the VDM display." Initially, the idea was to sell a kit system, as was common in the industry at that time. The kit concept would make it through to

2325-446: A video display in a terminal. Lancaster seemed interested, so Solomon took him to Albuquerque to meet Roberts. The two immediately began arguing when Lancaster criticized the design of the Altair and suggested changes to better support expansion cards, demands that Roberts flatly refused. Any hopes of a partnership disappeared. Solomon then traveled to California and approached Marsh with the same idea, stating that if they could produce

2418-430: A woodworker friend build a large light table and Felsenstein and the layout artist began using it to design the printed circuit board for the motherboard. While Felsenstein worked on the design, Marsh continually came up with new ideas that he demanded to be included. This led to creeping featuritis problems and the final design was not delivered until about two months of "frantic" work. The final product consisted of

2511-620: A year. Les Solomon , the Popular Electronics Technical Editor, wrote 6 articles in the rival Radio-Electronics using the pseudonym "B. R. Rogen". In 1972 and 1973 some of the best projects appeared in Radio-Electronics as the new Popular Electronics digested the merger. The upcoming personal computer benefited from this competition between Radio-Electronics and Popular Electronics . In September 1973 Radio-Electronics published Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter ,

2604-638: Is how Art Salsberg described the new magazine. Directed to enthusiasts like yourselves, who savor learning more about the latest developments in electronics and computer hardware, Modern Electronics shows you what's new in the world of electronics/computers, how this equipment works, how to use them, and construction plans for useful electronic devices. Many of you probably know of me from my decade-long stewardship of Popular Electronics magazine, which changed its name and editorial philosophy last year to distance itself from active electronics enthusiasts who move fluidly across electronics and computer product areas. In

2697-527: Is not clear if this was actually available. One commonly used software for the Sol-20 was the BASIC/5 language. This was able to run in even a minimal machine with a 4 KB expansion, but in order to fit it had only single-precision floating point numbers and lacked string variables. An Extended BASIC that ran in 8 KB added strings and other functions. Processor Technology also sold a wide variety of other programs, including many games, on cassette format for

2790-443: The DBIN pin on the 8080. Since only one bus was being used at a time, they could share a set of eight pins, which allowed the eight formerly dedicated to the second bus to be used as ground lines instead. Ultimately, the idea of using an external chassis was dropped. By this time the decision to use the additional lines for grounds had been made, which had the desirable side-effect of making

2883-470: The DBIN signaling and ground pins of the early design and this quickly became a de facto standard for S-100 cards. This change to the bus design was contentious, as it meant cards for the Altair did not work in the Sol without some adjustments. Felsenstein noted, "I take the position that Bob made me do it, and he takes the position that history will absolve him." Three "personality modules" were released with

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2976-584: The Apple II appeared with color graphics, it quickly became a best seller. To add to their woes, Processor Technology had contracted North Star Computers to write a new version of the BASIC for the Sol machines. North Star then began selling the resulting North Star BASIC to other vendors as well. Processor Technology sued North Star, claiming the contract had been exclusive. The suit dragged on, hurting both companies before Processor Technology ultimately lost. To add to

3069-457: The Commodore PET were on the market. Building computer kits was soon replaced by plugging in assembled boards. In 1982, Popular Electronics helped to introduce personal computer programming with its Programmer’s Notebook column written by Jim Keogh . Each column focused on a game programming. The column continued onto Computer & Electronics Magazine. Popular Electronics continued with

3162-767: The Sol-20 with five slots. A Sol-20 was taken to the Personal Computing Show in Atlantic City in August 1976 where it was a hit, building an order backlog that took a year to fill. Systems began shipping late that year and were dominated by the expandable Sol-20, which sold for $ 1,495 in its most basic fully-assembled form. The company also offered schematics for the system for free for those interested in building their own. The Sol-20 remained in production until 1979, by which point about 12,000 machines had been sold. By that time,

3255-451: The hacker ethic , the company also offered to send out copies of the schematic for the motherboard for the cost of postage, later estimating that somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 copies were sent. Few, if any, Sol-10s were sold, and the company focused on the Sol-20. The first machines shipped in December 1976. These were also available for third-party sales, and this began the formation of

3348-483: The "1977 trinity" —the Apple II , Commodore PET and TRS-80 — had begun to take over the market, and a series of failed new product introductions drove Processor Technology into bankruptcy. Felsenstein later developed the successful Osborne 1 computer, using much the same underlying design in a portable format. Lee Felsenstein was one of the sysops of Community Memory , the first public bulletin board system . Community Memory opened in 1973, running on

3441-482: The "Transistorized Tremolo" for an electric guitar; and a one tube VHF receiver to listen to aircraft. There were regular columns for Citizens Band (CB), amateur radio and shortwave listening (SWL). These would show a reader with his radio equipment each month. (Almost all of the readers were male.) Lou Garner's Transistor Topics covers the new transistorized FM stereo receivers and several readers' circuits. John T. Frye's fictional characters, Carl and Jerry, use

3534-411: The Helios system and refused to consider replacing PTDOS with CP/M. Helios proved to be highly unreliable and resulted in a lawsuit by those owners that had purchased them. Meanwhile, the company introduced one of its few new products during this period, 32 and 64  kB memory cards based on dynamic RAM which was much denser than the older SRAMs. These began failing at an alarming rate, overwhelming

3627-537: The Jewish guys." Stan Veit later joked to Solomon that they named it after him in another way, "the LES Intelligent Terminal". In February 1976, the first machine, a kludged-up box of parts, was readied and flown to New York to show Solomon. As he pointed out the features, Solomon asked what was stopping anyone from putting a BASIC on the personality ROM. Felsenstein, who had been told to avoid referring to it as

3720-552: The Sol, or on punch tape for other S-100 machines. Popular Electronics Popular Electronics was an American magazine published by John August Media, LLC, and hosted at TechnicaCuriosa.com. The magazine was started by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company in October 1954 for electronics hobbyists and experimenters. It soon became the "World's Largest-Selling Electronics Magazine". In April 1957, Ziff-Davis reported an average net paid circulation of 240,151 copies. Popular Electronics

3813-464: The article. Radio & Television News became Electronics World in 1959 and in January 1972 was merged into Popular Electronics . The process started in the summer of 1971 with a new editor, Milton S. Snitzer, replacing the longtime editor, Oliver P. Ferrell. The publishers decided to focus on topics with prosperous advertisers, such as CB Radio and audio equipment. Construction projects were no longer

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3906-613: The back of the case. A bent piece of sheet steel formed most of the case, capped on the left and right by the wooden panels Marsh demanded. The new design was first shown at the Midwest Area Computer Club conference in June 1976. The machine was not ready for sales at this point, but they did a brisk business selling their existing expansion card line. This was followed by the Personal Computing '76 (PC'76) show in late August in

3999-431: The back of the motherboard into holes in the case. Directly below the fan, was a UHF connector that produced composite video output. This could be connected to a monitor, or with a bit of work, a conventional television. The processor was near the back of the machine, with the memory and video circuits at the front. This required the video output to be routed to the back of the machine with a coaxial cable running across

4092-508: The board easier to design. The same 50-pin concept was instead implemented in an internal expansion chassis, the Sol-BPB. This extended vertically upwards from roughly the center of the motherboard. It had five horizontal connectors, and a metal framework on either side mechanically supported the expansion cards. The chassis also had another edge connector at the top, but it is unclear whether this could be used for further expansion. The BPB retained

4185-466: The company's ability to repair them. These problems caused the company to go bankrupt, and the company was eventually liquidated on 14 May 1979. Talks of producing a successor to the Sol-20 between Felsenstein and a group of investors including Adam Osborne fell through after Felsenstein enumerated all the improvements that would need to be made to make it competitive in the burgeoning early 1980s home computer market. However, in 1980, he collaborated with

4278-451: The complete ASCII character set with upper- and lower-case characters and a number of graphics characters like arrows and basic math symbols. An Altair equipped with a VDM-1 for output and Processor Technology's 3P+S card running a keyboard for input removed the need for a terminal, yet cost less than dedicated smart terminals like the Hazeltine. Before the VDM-1 was launched in late 1975,

4371-445: The database publisher (Information Access Company.) These groups were not profitable. Ziff took time off to successfully battle the prostate cancer. (He lived until 2006.) When he returned he focused on magazines like PC Magazine and MacUser to rebuild Ziff-Davis. In 1994 he and his sons sold Ziff-Davis for $ 1.4 billion. The title Popular Electronics was sold to Gernsback Publications and their Hands-On Electronics magazine

4464-456: The design within 30 days, he would put it on the cover of the magazine. Marsh once again hired Felsenstein to design the system. As Felsenstein later noted: In the process leading to the birth of the Sol, Leslie Solomon performed the act of the male. I still don't know who solicited whom. Felsenstein initially wanted to build a terminal following the model of his earlier Tom Swift design, using discrete electronics. Marsh, in parallel, sketched out

4557-491: The dilapidated Shelburne Hotel in Atlantic City . The order book was officially opened and Sol was a huge hit at this show. Soon after, Marsh was invited to demonstrate the Sol on NBC 's The Tomorrow Show . They used a game by Steve Dompier called "Target" to show off the system's capabilities. The show's host, Tom Snyder , ended up playing the game right through the commercial breaks, and they had to force him to give up

4650-511: The early history of the personal computer . Moore was an active member of the People's Computer Company and one of the founders of the Homebrew Computer Club , urging its members to "bring back more than you take." Fred Moore was also active in disarmament and social justice activism, as well as nonviolent civil disobedience and direct actions. As a UC Berkeley freshman in 1959, he held

4743-399: The early projects used vacuum tubes , as transistors (which had just become available to hobbyists) were expensive: the small-signal Raytheon CK722 transistor was US$ 3.50 in the December 1954 issue, while a typical small-signal vacuum tube (the 12AX7 ) was $ 0.61. Lou Garner wrote the feature story for the first issue, a battery-powered tube radio that could be used on a bicycle. Later he

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4836-475: The end of 1983 and Seth R. Alpert became editor. The magazine dropped all project articles and just reviewed hardware and software. The circulation was almost 600,000 in January 1985 when Forrest Mims wrote about the tenth anniversary of the Altair 8800 computer. In October 1984 Art Salsberg started a competing magazine, Modern Electronics . Editor Alexander W. Burawa and contributors Forrest Mims, Len Feldman, and Glenn Hauser moved to Modern Electronics . Here

4929-413: The energy of its founding members. January 1975 was also the month that the Altair 8800 appeared on the front page of Popular Electronics , sparking off intense interest among the engineers of the rapidly growing Silicon Valley . Shortly thereafter, on 5 March 1975, Gordon French and Fred Moore held the first meeting of what would become the Homebrew Computer Club . Felsenstein took Marsh to one of

5022-509: The feature articles. They were replaced by new product reviews. The change in editorial direction upset many authors. Dan Meyer wrote a letter in his SWTPC catalog referring to the magazine, Popular Electronics with Electronics World , as "PEEW". He urged his customers to switch to Radio-Electronics . Don Lancaster , Daniel Meyer , Forrest Mims , Ed Roberts , John Simonton and other authors switched to Radio-Electronics. Even Solid State columnist Lou Garner moved to Radio-Electronics for

5115-538: The first year. By the end of 1975 there were a dozen companies producing computer kits and peripherals using the Altair circuit bus, later renamed the S-100 bus and set as an IEEE standard. The February 1975 issue featured an "All Solid-State TV Camera" by three Stanford University students: Terry Walker, Harry Garland and Roger Melen . While the Cyclops Camera , as it was called, was designed to use an oscilloscope for

5208-539: The five expansion slots and a fan to cool them, for $ 995 as a kit or $ 1,495 assembled. Advertising of the time referred to the Sol-20 as "The first complete small computer under $ 1,000 ". Most systems would require additional pieces, which they bundled as the "Sol Systems"; the Sol System I consisted of a Sol-20, an 8k RAM card, a PT-872 monitor and the RQ-413 Cassette Recorder, for $ 2,129 . In keeping with

5301-521: The floppy line. Processor Technology selected the new Persci 270 in its place. The 270 had two drive bays operated by a single drive and voice coil head positioner, which meant a two-drive system was only slightly more complex than a single drive. This was released as the Helios II, at $ 1,895 for the kit or $ 2,295 assembled. Processor Technology moved to a much larger factory in Pleasanton, California . It

5394-560: The image display, the article mentions that it could also be connected to the Altair computer. It soon was, the authors got one of the first Altair computers and designed an interface for the camera. They also designed a full color video display for the Altair, "The TV Dazzler" , that appeared on the cover of the February 1976 issue. This was the start of Cromemco , a computer company that grew to over 500 employees by 1983. The internet did not exist in 1975 but time-sharing computers did. With

5487-399: The improved Intel 8080 processor. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics had the Altair computer on the cover and this launched the home computer revolution. (However, Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs incorrectly identified the magazine that ran the article as Popular Mechanics .) The magazine was digest size ( 6.5 in × 9 in ) for the first 20 years. The cover logo was

5580-407: The injury, North Star then released a new 5.25-inch drive for the system that sold at half the cost of the Helios. A patch that allowed CP/M to run on the new drives killed off any interest in alternatives like PTDOS, and new business applications like WordStar and Electric Pencil soon cemented CP/M as the standard operating system for all S-100 machines. Processor Technology continued selling

5673-426: The layout before it needed to be photographed. Marsh decided that the machine should have a cassette deck , so they mocked up a machine with a keyboard on the left and cassette player on the right. The first motherboard arrived 45 days after the project started, and the first cases and power supplies about 15 days after that. By this point it was clear the system was a usable microcomputer on its own, but "the decision

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5766-451: The machine in order to finish the show. The Sol was initially offered in three versions. The base motherboard was offered as the Sol-PC, available as a kit for $ 575 , or fully assembled and tested for $ 745 . The Sol-10 added a case, keyboard and power supply, was $ 895 in kit form and $ 1,295 assembled. Finally the Sol-20 added a keyboard with numeric keypad, and a larger power supply to feed

5859-435: The majority of the money, $ 14,905, after ten hours of debate and most people having left. Moore applied the politics of draft resistance to what he saw as an oppressive educational system summarised in the institution of school. In 1971 he published Skool Resistance where he said "Learning is living. If you try to separate learning from living, you end up with some artificial environment that can be defined as skool." Fred

5952-499: The meetings, Marsh saw an opportunity supplying add-on cards for the Altair, and in April, he formed Processor Technology with his friend Gary Ingram. The new company's first product was a 4  kB DRAM memory card for the Altair. A similar card was already available from the Altair's designers, MITS , but it was almost impossible to get working properly. Marsh began offering Felsenstein contracts to draw schematics or write manuals for

6045-476: The microcomputer market. Ed Roberts , who had developed the Altair, eventually arranged a deal with Teletype to supply refurbished Model 33s to MITS customers who had bought an Altair. Les Solomon, whose Popular Electronics magazine launched the Altair, felt a low-cost smart terminal would be highly desirable in the rapidly expanding microcomputer market. In December 1975, Solomon traveled to Phoenix to meet with Don Lancaster to ask about using his TV Typewriter as

6138-602: The most successful personal computers at that time. Popular Electronics had many other computer projects such as the Altair 680, the Speechlab voice recognition board and the COSMAC ELF . They did not have the field to themselves. A dedicated computer magazine, Byte , was started in September 1975. It was soon followed by other new magazines. By the end of 1977, fully assembled computers such as Apple II , Radio Shack TRS-80 , and

6231-441: The only way to program the Altair was through its front-panel switches and LED lamps, or by purchasing a serial card and using a terminal of some sort. This was typically a Model 33, which still cost $ 1,500 if available. Normally the teletypes were not available – Teletype Corporation typically sold them only to large commercial customers, which led to a thriving market for broken-down machines that could be repaired and sold into

6324-458: The operator's hands. On the rear right of the case (as seen from the front), directly to the rear of the numeric keypad, was the power supply, which also provided a fan to cool the circuitry. The main motherboard sat to the left of the power supply, spanning about ⁠ 2 / 3 ⁠ of the case's width. The motherboard extended forward under the keyboard all the way to the front of the case. Cassette, parallel and serial ports extended off

6417-527: The original systems. CONSOL provided a simple terminal emulator function, along with a small number of additional commands to load and run programs from tape using TLOAD . SOLOS added names to the files on the cassette, the TSAVE command for saving data to the tape into a named file, and TCAT to print out the details of a named program. TXEC loaded and executed a named program in one step. SOLED included block-mode editing, used on some mainframe systems, but it

6510-479: The products they planned to introduce. Felsenstein was still working on the terminal as well, and in July, Marsh offered to pay him to develop the video portion. This was essentially a version of the terminal where the data would be supplied by the main memory of the Altair rather than a serial port. The result was the VDM-1 , the first graphics card . The VDM-1 could display 16 lines of 64 characters per line, and included

6603-523: The reams of paper output from the terminal were too expensive to be practical and the system jammed all the time. The replacement of the Model 33 with a Hazeltine glass terminal helped, but it required constant repairs. Since 1973, Felsenstein had been looking for ways to lower the cost. One of his earliest designs in the computer field was the Pennywhistle modem , a 300 bits per second acoustic coupler that

6696-419: The release, at which time it was known as the Sol-PC. As the design process continued, at some point the decision was made to offer the system in complete form, with all the parts needed for a complete system. Felsenstein originally thought he was only needed for the initial design, but as the physical layout began it was clear that the layout artist they had hired would not be able to do it on his own. Marsh had

6789-416: The top of the card. Originally, expansion was going to be handled through an external cage that connected to the main console using two 50-pin ribbon cables. The original Altair bus design lacked signal ground pins for each of its data lines, a decision that had been made in order to reduce pin count and allow it to fit into 100-pin connectors they found in surplus. This led to noisy signals as they all shared

6882-478: The trademark and started Popular Electronics with the October 1954 issue. Many of the editors and authors worked for both Ziff-Davis magazines. Initially Oliver Read was the editor of both Radio & Television News and Popular Electronics . Read was promoted to Publisher in June 1956. Oliver Perry Ferrell took over as editor of Popular Electronics and William A. Stocklin became editor of Radio & Television News . In Radio & TV News John T. Frye wrote

6975-417: The working unit. Due to publication timelines, it did not appear in the magazine until the July 1976 issue, where it was described as "high-quality intelligent terminal". The cover image showed the mockup version, packaged in a slim case. By the time the article appeared, the design had changed; the new design had a distinct "step" behind the keyboard that rose up over the expansion chassis and power supply at

7068-458: The years 1966 to 1971 SWTPC's authors wrote 64 articles and had 25 cover stories in Popular Electronics . (Don Lancaster alone had 23 articles and 10 were cover stories.) The San Antonio Express-News did a feature story on Southwest Technical Products in November 1972. "Meyer built his mail-order business from scratch to more than $ 1 million in sales in six years." The company was shipping 100 kits

7161-577: Was ⁠ 1 / 3 ⁠ the cost of commercial models. When he saw Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter on the cover of the September 1973 Radio Electronics , he began adapting its circuitry as the basis for a design he called the Tom Swift Terminal. The terminal was deliberately designed to allow it to be easily repaired. Combined with the Pennywhistle, users would have a cost-effective way to access Community Memory. In January 1975, Felsenstein saw

7254-433: Was a growing pastime. Heathkit and many others offered kits that included all of the parts with detailed instructions. The premier cover shows the assembly of a Heathkit A-7B audio amplifier. Popular Electronics would offer projects that were built from scratch; that is, the individual parts were purchased at a local electronics store or by mail order. The early issues often showed these as father and son projects. Most of

7347-467: Was at about this point that Radio Shack introduced the TRS-80 . Like the Sol, it was a complete all-in-one machine but came with its own monitor and sold for about half the price. Moreover, it was available at hundreds of Radio Shack stores across North America. Sales of the Sol plummeted. Meanwhile, the company failed to introduce any of the other new products it mentioned, notably the color graphics card. When

7440-552: Was called "POP'tronics News Scope." In January 2000 a successor magazine was renamed Poptronics . In the 1960s, Fawcett Publications had a competing magazine, Electronics Illustrated . The cover showed a 15-inch (38 cm) black and white TV kit by Conar that cost $ 135. The feature construction story was a "Radiation Fallout Monitor" for "keeping track of the radiation level in your neighborhood." (The Cuban Missile Crisis happened that October.) Other construction projects included "The Fish Finder", an underwater temperature probe;

7533-517: Was co-founder with Gordon French of the Homebrew Computer Club which first met on March 5, 1975. This club was subsequently called "the crucible for an entire industry." Moore is prominently featured in the books What the Dormouse Said by John Markoff and Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy . Both highlight Moore's contribution to the democratization of

7626-433: Was given a column called Transistor Topics (June 1956). Transistors soon cost less than a dollar and transistor projects became common in every issue of Popular Electronics . The column was renamed to Solid State in 1965 and ran under his byline until December 1978. The July 1962 issue had 112 pages, the editor was Oliver P. Ferrell and the monthly circulation was 400,000. The magazine had a full page of electronics news that

7719-483: Was in Electronics World (May 1960) and latter he had a 2 part cover feature for Radio-Electronics (October, November 1962). The March 1963 issue of Popular Electronics featured his ultrasonic listening device on the cover. Don Lancaster graduated from Lafayette College (1961) and Arizona State University (1966). A 1960s fad was to have colored lights synchronized with music. This psychedelic lighting

7812-418: Was made economical by the development of the silicon controlled rectifier (SCR). Don's first published article was "Solid-State 3-Channel Color Organ" in the April 1963 issue of Electronics World . He was paid $ 150 for the story. The projects in Popular Electronics changed from vacuum tube to solid state in the early 1960s. Tube circuits used a metal chassis with sockets, transistor circuits worked best on

7905-563: Was made to soft-pedal the fact until the last possible moment. Once published, all the fuss possible was to be made about its general-purpose nature; but until it actually saw print, it was to be treated first as a terminal." As the machine increasingly expanded in power, Felsenstein suggested the name "Sol", because they were including "the wisdom of Solomon" in the system. Les Solomon would later quip that "if it worked, they'll say Sol means 'sun' in Spanish. If it don't work, they're gonna blame it on

7998-511: Was moved from the Table of Contents page to the cover. There is debate about what machine was the first personal computer, the Altair 8800 (1975), the Mark-8 (1974), or even back to Kenbak-1 (1971). The computer in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics captured the attention of the 400,000 or so readers. Before then, home computers were lucky to sell a hundred units. The Altair sold thousands in

8091-506: Was providing the kits for other authors such as Lou Garner. In 1967 he sold a kit for Don Lancaster's "IC-67 Metal Locator". In early 1967 Meyer moved his growing business from his home to a new building on a 3-acre (12,000 m ) site in San Antonio. The Daniel E. Meyer Company (DEMCO) became Southwest Technical Products Corporation ( SWTPC ) that fall. In 1967, Popular Electronics had 6 articles by Dan Meyer and 4 by Don Lancaster. Seven of that year's cover stories featured kits sold by SWTPC. In

8184-480: Was published until October 1982 when, in November 1982, Ziff-Davis launched a successor magazine, Computers & Electronics . During its last year of publication by Ziff-Davis, Popular Electronics reported an average monthly circulation of 409,344 copies. The title was sold to Gernsback Publications , and their Hands-On Electronics magazine was renamed to Popular Electronics in February 1989, and published until December 1999. The Popular Electronics trademark

8277-399: Was renamed to Popular Electronics in February 1989. This version was published until it was merged with Electronics Now to become Poptronics in January 2000. In late 2002, Gernsback Publications went out of business and the January 2003 Poptronics was the last issue. Fred Moore (activist) Fred Moore (1941–1997) was an American political activist who was central to

8370-469: Was then acquired by John August Media, who revived the magazine, the digital edition of which is hosted at TechnicaCuriosa.com, along with sister titles, Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Astronomy . A cover story on Popular Electronics could launch a new product or company. The most famous issue, January 1975, had the Altair 8800 computer on the cover and ignited the home computer revolution. Paul Allen showed that issue to Bill Gates . They wrote

8463-555: Was to build a complete computer with a terminal program in ROM. Felsenstein suggested the name "Sol" because they were including " the wisdom of Solomon " in the box. The Sol appeared on the cover of the July 1976 issue of Popular Electronics as a "high-quality intelligent terminal". It was initially offered in three versions; the Sol-PC motherboard in kit form, the Sol-10 without expansion slots, and

8556-431: Was used for two years. The large photo of the feature project was gone, replaced by a textual list of articles. In August 1974 the magazine switched to a larger letter size format ( 8.5 in × 11 in ). This was done to allow larger illustrations such as schematics, to switch printing to offset presses, and respond to advertisers desire for larger ad pages. The longtime tag line, "World's Largest Selling Electronics Magazine",

8649-415: Was working on the physical design. He demanded from the start that it use walnut sides; while working on the digital clock project he had learned from his woodworker friend that they could get parts for practically nothing if they were small enough to be made from off-cuts. Beyond that requirement, anything was fair. The deadline for the magazine had been pushed back, but there was still little time to finalize

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