James Knott wrote:
Randall R Schulz wrote:
James,
On Monday 25 October 2004 18:52, James Knott wrote:
...
Take a look at the IMSAI 8080. That was my first computer, which I bought in Nov 1976.
Lucky you! All I could do was read the article in Electronics Illustrated ... Or was it Popular Electronics? Yeah, I think it was Popular Electronics. I was hooked on both of 'em when I was a kid.
There was an article in the (IIRC) Jan 1974 issue of Popular Electronics about the Altair 8800. The IMSAI was an Altair clone. Of course, back in those days, computer hardware was far more expensive than now, and couldn't do anywhere near as much. For example 4 Kbytes of memory ran about $200. Almost all hardware came in kit form, consisting of a bare board and a bag of parts. So we did a lot of soldering back in those days. For example, each connector on the mother board required 100 solder connections. Also, in order to do anything, I first had to load in a monitor program, using the front panel and then save it to cassette. I also had to write my own device drivers in assembler and then hand assemble the code, which was then entered using the front panel. However, back in those days you also knew your computer inside and out.
I built one that was before the altar and imsai. It used the 8008 chip. I had 2k memory and tiny basic. Could still do a lot with it. Other wise it was the same. Bob