ALTAIR 8800 micro Users Manual
©
Briel Computers
2010
page
4
In 1977, Ed Roberts moved back to rural Georgia after the sale of MITS to Pertec. Nearby Mercer University
started a medical school in 1982 and Ed Roberts went on to be the first graduating class and get his medical
degree in 1986. He did his residency in internal medicine and in 1988 established his own practice. Ed Roberts
died on April 1, 2010 after a long bout of pneumonia at the age of 68. The computer system he created was
introduced to the world in the January 1975 edition of Popular Electronics and shall live on forever.
January 1975 Popular Electronics featuring the ALTAIR 8800
The article describes the entire system of the Altair and took two issues to cover the entire system. The
production version was not ready at the time and MITS had this case made for the magazine article. You could
purchase an affordable base kit for $439 which included the case, CPU board and 256 bytes of memory. The
assembled version was $621. Soon after the release Bill Gates sent Ed Roberts a letter stating he had a software
company that had BASIC that would work on the Altair. Paul Allen came to MITS in Albuquerque to
demonstrate their program using paper tape; it crashed after it displayed “Altair Basic”. The next day a new
paper tape reader was brought in and BASIC loaded successfully. This was the beginning of Microsoft, the
largest software company in history.
Copies of BASIC were bundled with a pair of Altair 4K RAM boards for $75. However, the RAM boards were
flawed and most users did not want those boards. Robert Marsh who formed Processor Technology offered 4K
static RAM boards for $255. His company was the most successful company that produced Altair compatible
products. This kept many hobbyists from wanting the flawed 4K MITS boards and the full retail price for
BASIC from Micro-Soft was $500. The Homebrew computer club was formed in 1975 and the primary
computer there was the Altair 8800 system. Steve Dompier passed a copy of the pre-release version of BASIC
to Dan Sokol who had access to a high speed tape punch. The next day at the Homebrew Computer Club
meeting, 50 copies of BASIC were made available to members for $.50 each. Shortly, many people had copies
of BASIC and were passing it along freely. Word of this got back to Bill Gates and prompted this open letter to
hobbyists in 1976:
