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 ...

Build Your Own Altair 8800 Personal Computer The MITS Altair 8800 was the first commercially successful personal computer. Created by Ed Roberts in 1974, it was purchased by the thousands via mail ...

You can forget about the IBM Personal Computer and drop all the pretense about the 1984 Apple Macintosh. When it comes to which personal computer is the most influential of all time, there can only be ...

Browse around eBay for an original Altair 8800 and you quickly find that the price range is in the thousands of dollars. If you are a collector and have some money in your pocket maybe that’s okay.

[Dirk] posted a video (you can see below) titled, “Mystery Retro Project Start.” That turned out to be the first of a multipart series on his Altair 8800 Again simulator. The front panel appears to be ...

On December 19, 1974, the first successful personal computer went on sale. They called it the Altair 8800. Popular Electronics magazine profiled the new PC in their January 1975 issue. Readers learned ...

A 1974 MITS Altair 8800 kit computer has been restored to operational condition and has now executed software for the first recorded time, with the milestone dated January 14, 2026. The system had ...

This is part of a series of posts about the circumstances leading up to the launch of the Altair 8800 in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. In my last few posts, I talked about the ...

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts. Ed Roberts, an engineer who helped develop a precursor to the modern ...

This is part of a series of posts about the circumstances leading up to the launch of the Altair 8800 in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. In my last few posts, I talked about the ...

I'm shamefully ignorant of early computers, although I can admire with an LED-appreciationists' eye the banks of flickering lights and glorious toggle switches. So it's the aesthete in me that loves ...