There’s a backplane board (about $100) as well as a few boards to fit it available for about $30 each — unpopulated, of course. We’ll confess we haven’t watched all 56 videos yet.

From PDPs to Connection Machines, the Hackaday crowd are big fans of blinkenlights. While this project isn’t an old CPU, RAM, ROM, and an S-100 bus wrapped up in a fancy enclosure, it is a gr… ...

Description A computer board for the Altair 8800 microcomputer. Not long after Intel introduced its 8080 microprocessor, a small firm in Albuquerque, New Mexico, named MITS (Micro Instrumentation and ...

1974: The Altair 8800 microcomputer goes on sale. It doesn’t offer much, but it’s the small start of a big trend toward small things. A small New Mexico company — with the big name of Micro ...

Extremely rare rack-mountable version of the Altair 8800. This 8800b is loaded (see below). Included is a homebrew, full-featured front panel.CPU number 749 INS 8080A0 C8080ASerial Number: 300 ...

Ed Roberts, developer of MITS Altair 8800 computer, dies at 68 By Associated Press April 1, 2010 2:30 PM PT ...

LEDs, 1974: high tech, kiddo. The Altair 8800 kit sold for just under $400 (about $1,700 in today's money). If you wanted to forgo the case, you could get the kit for under $300.

In 1975, Bill and I were using the same computing tech - the Altair 8800 and DEC's PDP-10 - as BASIC became a gateway for generations of developers. Where were you all those decades ago?

Roberts was a founder of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), a retailer of electronics kits for hobbyists. There he designed the Altair 8800, arguably the first personal computer.

And even if one assembled the kit correctly it was sometimes difficult to get the Altair to operate reliably. Credit Line Forrest M. Mims, III Date made 1974 ID Number 1987.0066.01 catalog number 1987 ...