Altair 8800
The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics and was sold by mail order through advertisements there, in Radio-Electronics, and in other hobbyist magazines. According to Harry Garland, the Altair 8800 was the product that catalyzed the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. It was the first commercially successful personal computer. The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a de facto standard in the form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC.
Altair 8800 Computer with 8-inch floppy disk system | |
| Developer | MITS |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | MITS |
| Release date | January 1975 |
| Introductory price | Kit: US $439 ($2500 in 2023) Assembled: US $621 ($3500 in 2023) |
| Units sold | 25,000 |
| CPU | Intel 8080 @ 2 MHz |
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.