18 Facts About MITS Altair

The MITS Altair is widely recognized as the spark that ignited the microcomputer revolution as the first commercially successful personal computer.

The computer bus designed for the MITS 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, MITS Altair BASIC.

Model rocket kits were a modest success and MITS Altair wanted to try a kit that would appeal to more hobbyists.

MITS Altair later developed a programmer unit that would connect to the 816 or 1440 calculator and allow programs of up to 256 steps.

MITS Altair was impressed with Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter article and wanted computer projects for Popular Electronics.

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The finished MITS Altair computer had a completely different circuit board layout than the prototype shown in the magazine.

Typical MITS Altair product had a generic name like the "Model 1440 Calculator" or the "Model 1600 Digital Voltmeter".

MITS Altair thought the Intel 4004 and Intel 8008 were not powerful enough ; the National Semiconductor IMP-8 and IMP-16 required external hardware; the Motorola 6800 was still in development.

Some salesmen said that MITS Altair was getting cosmetic rejects or otherwise inferior chips.

The MITS Altair had enough power to be actually useful, and was designed as an expandable system that opened it up to all sorts of applications.

MITS Altair had under 20 employees in January but had grown to 90 by October 1975.

MITS Altair had no competition in the US for the first half of 1975.

MITS Altair's company was Processor Technology, one of the most successful Altair compatible board suppliers.

The MITS Altair motherboard consisted of 4 slots segments that had to be connected together with 100 wires.

The IMSAI advantage was short lived because MITS had recognized these shortcomings and developed the Altair 8800B which was introduced in June 1976.

In 1977, Pertec Computer Corporation purchased MITS Altair and began to market the computer, without changes, as the PCC 8800 in 1978.

MITS Altair then looked for a cheap source of connectors, and came across a supply of 100-pin edge connectors.

MITS Altair called the company and reached a private home, where no one had heard of anything like BASIC.