NAME  

ALTAIR 8800

MANUFACTURER  

MITS

TYPE  

Professional Computer

ORIGIN  

U.S.A.

YEAR  

1975

KEYBOARD  

No keyboard, but switches on front panel.

CPU  

Intel 8080A (rarely 8080)

SPEED  

2 MHz (each instruction takes 4 clock cycles)

RAM  

256 bytes (you had to buy this memory board)

ROM  

None

TEXT MODES 

None (optional 64 x 12 card)

GRAPHIC MODES 

None

SIZE / WEIGHT 

Unknown

I/O PORTS 

Unknown

POWER SUPPLY 

Unknown

PRICE  

$595

 

MITS Altair 8800

Altair 8800

This computer was one of the first "home" computers ever made, it was sold as a kit, but for additional money, you could buy one fully assembled.

It has no keyboard, the "program" has to be entered with the switches located on the front panel of the "computer", and as it does not have video output (yet), the result is displayed via LEDs.


The ALTAIR 8800 had one input port (I/O address 254), which was the left hand 8 address switches, and one output port (I/O address 255), which has eight of the LEDS (while the CPU was in run mode). The input port was called the " Sense Switches".

MITS made several peripherals and cards for this computer, namely, a video card, a serial card to connect a terminal, a RAM expansion card and a 8" floppy drive (70 KB).

Several models were launched, and all had the same characteristics except the CPU (8080 and later 8080A). Another computer, which had almost the same characteristics, was launched by IMSAI and was called IMSAI 8080.

Believe it or not, the name "Altair" comes from Star Trek! The young daughter of the 'Popular Electronics' magazine editor gave it the name of the destination planet of the Enterprise from the episode she was watching.