Re: Byte Magazine: 18 Vintage issues, 1985-1986

[Michael Black <blackm00@CAM.ORG>]

On 28 Jul 1999, Eric Smith wrote:

> Michael Black <blackm00@CAM.ORG> writes:
> > If we're talking about rarities, I actually had the January 1975 issue of 
> > Popular Electroanics (the real one, not the one masquerading as such on
> > the newsstands today), which of course had the Altair 8800 on the cover.
> 
> Not to put to fine a point on it, but that issue did NOT have an
> Altair 8800 on the cover.  The cover featured something *much* more rare
> than an Altair 8800.  Bonus of one hundred quatloos for whoever knows
> what it really showed.  :-)
> 
> 
Picky, picky, picky.

MITS sent an Altair 8800 to Popular Electronics so they could photograph
it for the cover, and perhaps even take a look at it though I'm less
certain of that.

The Altair disappeared in transit, never to be seen again.

What appears on the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics was not a
working Altair, but a mockup made specifically for purposes of having it's
photo on the cover of the magazine.

Now we should speculate on what happened to that Altair lost in transit.
Will it show up someday under a pile of other stuff, unopened?  Did
someone steal it years ago, seeing a piece of electronic equipment and
figuring it was worth stealing?  Did someone realize what it was, and
steal it as a result?  In the former case, it may have been trashed when
he tried to fence it and nobody knew what it was.  In the latter, someone
may have it this day, but just as with stolen art, cannot share it with
anyone else.

Or if you want to get sinister, maybe MITS never did send an Altair to PE,
feeling they couldn't afford it, so they claimed they sent it, so they
could send only a mockup after.

      Michael