What Does Altair 8800 Mean?
The Altair 8800 is a computer kit based on the Intel 8080 CPU, designed by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), which was headed by H. Edward Roberts, in 1974. It became the first-ever commercially successful personal computer, especially compared to the first microprocessor-based personal computer – Micral. Because of its success, the Altair 8800 initiated the personal computer age. Also because of its success, its computer bus became the de facto standard called the S-100 bus (IEEE-696). The first programming language for the machine was Altair BASIC, Microsoft’s founding product.
Techopedia Explains Altair 8800
The Altair 8800, based on the Intel 8080 processor, was aimed at hobbyists but it became the first commercially successful personal computer because it hit the sweet spot of performance and price. It was sold at $439 per kit in a time where other commercial personal computers were in the thousands range. The kit provided the minimum configuration of circuits that could be legitimately called a computer. However, programming the said machine was tedious. The user had to toggle switches to positions corresponding to 8080 microprocessor instruction or opcode in binary.
