Altair 8800

The Altair 8800 utilized the Intel 8080 microprocessor, which operated at a clock speed of 2 MHz. This 8-bit chip was the brain of the machine, allowing it to process instructions and perform basic calculations. The computer utilized the groundbreaking S-100 bus architecture, which became an early industry standard for microcomputers.

The Altair 8800 was designed and produced by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), a company based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The company was led by H. Edward Roberts, who is often credited as the creator of the first commercially successful personal computer. It famously appeared on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine in January 1975.

Yes, the Altair 8800 was the catalyst for the founding of Microsoft. In 1975, a young Bill Gates and Paul Allen developed a version of the BASIC programming language specifically for the Altair 8800. This software, known as Altair BASIC, was Microsoft's very first product.

The original Altair 8800 kit did not come with a keyboard, monitor, or disk drive; it only had a panel of toggle switches and LED lights on the front. Users had to input machine code programs manually by flipping the switches up and down to represent binary digits. The blinking red LEDs served as the primary output display to show the memory registers.