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How the Altair 8800 started the PC revolution (Part 1)

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Uploaded by on Jun 15, 2008

How the MITS Altair 8800 started the "personal computer" revolution
Clip of the film documentation "Triumph of the Nerds"
http://www.pbs.org/nerds/

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Science & Technology

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Standard YouTube License

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  • Thanks for the video :)

  • Yay Georgia.

  • thumbs up if you agree -

    you can tell these guys never got laid in college..

  • Best computer

  • @MrWalalaa

    You are so childish

  • IM THE FIRST 1 TO DISLIKE!!! btw i liked the video but its cool to be the 1st 1 to dislike

  • @brunobliss

    It's a glorified calculator in its native form. However as it went along cards that you could put in the thing allowed you to hook it up to a monitor, keyboard, and other I/O devices. Then turning it into a real computer. However, even with those things attached, you had to play with the switches in the front before it would recognize them. Basically coding your own drivers.

  • I learned how to solder, helping my dad put the thing together in 1975, I was 5. I think it came with 2k and could be expanded to 4k. It was programmed in binary. When he got a SOL, we lost interest in the Altair, eventually moved onto a TRS-80, Apple II, and you know the rest. The Altair was stolen by the Mexican government when my father brought it down there to start a computer museum in about 1994. All the early computers never came back from customs.

  • they keep talking about the early ones but that exactly did it do? just a calculator?

  • It's so AMAZING when I think how MUCH Bill Gates and Steve Jobs/Woz changed the human race. It's almost mind-boggling; insane!

    Forever changed; transformed into the Information Age.

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