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The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. [2] It was the first commercially successful personal computer. [ 3 ]
The S-100 bus or Altair bus, IEEE 696-1983 (inactive-withdrawn), is an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800. The S-100 bus was the first industry standard expansion bus for the microcomputer industry. S-100 computers, consisting of processor and peripheral cards, were produced by a number of manufacturers.
They were unsuccessful at that venture but later created the Altair 8800 computer kit that sparked the home computer revolution. The construction projects in Electronics Illustrated were assembled and checked by the editors. The articles had numerous photos and always included a wiring diagram in addition to the schematic.
The new company's first product was a 4 kB DRAM memory card for the Altair. A similar card was already available from the Altair's designers, MITS, but it was almost impossible to get working properly. [17] Marsh began offering Felsenstein contracts to draw schematics or write manuals for the products they planned to introduce.
The technical manuals for the Altair 8800 provided electrical schematics of the 100 pin computer bus allowing others to design compatible boards. There was not a proper technical standard at the time and some "compatible" boards did not work with other "compatible" boards. Later, the industry developed the S-100 bus standard. [58]
The TV Typewriter is considered a milestone in the home computer revolution along with the Mark-8 and Altair 8800 computers. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Sometimes the term was used generically for any interactive computer display on a screen; until CRT displays were developed, the teleprinter was the standard output medium.
The Tarbell Cassette Interface is an expansion card for use with the Altair 8800 early personal computer, or other systems using the Altair's S-100 bus. It was designed by Don Tarbell [ 1 ] and sold by Tarbell Electronics starting in 1976. [ 2 ]
Intel had announced the 8080 chip, and compared to the 4004 to which IMS Associates had been first introduced, it looked like a "real computer". Full-scale development of the IMSAI 8080 was put into action using the existing Altair 8800's S-100 bus, and by October 1975 an ad was placed in Popular Electronics, receiving positive reactions. [5]