Re: Altair 8800 Computer Kit

["Grant Stockly" <grant@stockly.com>]

Michael J. Mahon wrote:
> Grant Stockly wrote:
> > Henry thought you guys would like to hear about it.  Without the
> > Altair, MicroSoft would not have existed in the same way.  This could
> > have been bad for the Apple II!  :)
>
> Way too tenuous.
>
> If this logic applied, then discussions of cosmology would
> be right on topic here.

How is this one...  Steve W and J wrote Byte magazine for suggestions
on what to have in a computer.  They had ideas of using an S-100 bus
with the 6502 and 16k of RAM.

It starts out "My friend and I are technicians for Hewlett Packard and
Atari and are very interested in designing a computer system.  Although
we have designed some stuff (blue boxes, etc), we have never tackled a
project as ambitious as this.  We decided to use the 6502 processor
because we got one pretty cheaply and just can't afford a good
processor like the Z80 on our salaries!..."

Drop me an e-mail and I'd be happy to e-mail you the scanned BYTE page.
 :)  It then suggests they use a TV set for I/O, etc.

Now the late IMSAI used the Z80, hate them!  The Altair is as fast or
slower than the Apple II!  ;)  But, no S-100 bus...no idea of using the
S-100 bus.  :)

Speaking of that, I have 8 DVDs of Apple II historic documents scanned
from the Apple Library and taken from websites in the early 90s.  I
also have another 5 DVDs on the Lisa, Cannon Cat (made by the Macintosh
creator), and early Mac info.  Including the inter Apple Memos in the
1980s on the "Macintosh", which had a 5 1/4" disk drive and a text
based interface.

I have not had time to look through these and would love to pass them
onto you guys.  I have made this offer available to the guys at
AppleFritter for over a year and no one has taken me up.

I was given all these documents for free, so I want to do the same.
But I hope that who ever gets these can act as a hub for all of the
other interested parties?

Information wants to be free!

Not to continue the argument, but I think vintage Altair is more on
topic than a pneumatic page turning book scanner.  :P  ;)

I'm remembering another memo on the disks telling all staff to quit
using typewriters and IBM word processors.  It said something like "If
we expect our customers to use our computers, then we should!"  :)