Altair 8800 - Video #7.1 - Loading 4K BASIC with a Teletype

O lord. Thanks Jobs and Soniak!

The first computer I ever wrote a program on was a PDP 8/e connected to a Teletype ASR-33. 45 minutes of loading BASIC from paper tape, just like this.

You can just see the old school hackers like Greenblatt and Gosper using equipment like this to do their programming.

This is so cool...

Totally agreement with geert😂

so cool!

❤

They were geniuses the people who did 4k roms

Is it possible to:

1. Get information on exactly what hardware was used (boards, etc.), and how it was connected.

2. Get raw binary images of the tapes for things like the 4k and 8k Basic. (Plus any other software)

This is exactly how I started out way back when. Thanks for posting this.

SO COOOOOL! Thank you for doing this!

I always wonder to see Altair Basic in action! Thanks a lot!

Oh my HECK, how this works is SUPER fascinating to me! And until you hook up a terminal, that printer paper is your "monitor," wow!

"...Reads in the rest of BASIC off the tape."

I bet it actually leaves it on the tape while reading it FROM there.

"When the Altair boots up, it has nothing inside it except..."

It hasn't booted up at that point!

I did this, but with a Cromemco Z2, S-100 system, not an Altar

Ah yes, I remember keying that boot loader and the long and noisy loading of Basic. I only did it a few times then wrote a program that read the tape and copied it to a cassette tape. I modified the boot loader to read from the modem which was faster and silent.

One Saturday in the late 70’s I thought I wanted to play a game of Battleship. After toggling in the bootloader, I started loading my copy of 12K MS basic paper tape. That was 45 minutes, and it came to READY. Next, I started the load of Battleship paper tape. That was another 45 minutes, and that too came to READY. Then the power to the apartment blinked. I then left the apartment in disgusted to do something else. The next board I bought was an auto tape interface. That lasted for about a month or two and after that was a floppy drive system (90K).

Playing Pong with 1 frame per sheet of paper will be the real thing...

Thanks for showing this 👍

so, cpu attatched to the typewriter. i would have never guessed that. Cool machine gun is the best part of it

I am fascinated by paper tapes.

It's was a funny and educational video to watch. Thanks.

Thanks 👍

That tape was one of the first pirated pieces of software, lol!

This brings back memories of sights and sounds of our high school computer. :)

The sounds of that paper tape reader instantly brought me back to 1974. Thanks! I bet I still have rolls of yellow paper tape somewhere here.

Well, actually, 1 is not a prime number ;)

OG here. Yeah I used an ASR-33 teletype in college for nu

Super!

i live in an apartment . my neigbors would just "love " this . esp downstairs . chunka chunka chunka .:):):):):)

Why would a vintage Altair be damaged if it got hooked up to a teletype machine, as mentioned at the end of your video?

Google up the 1970s 'SCCS Interface' and 'Interface Age' magazines, available online. also Byte and PCW.

The mid 70s issues are a great read.

Teletypes are migraine inducing, the paper punch is noisy, the print head is nasty loud.
they normally were used in sound proof cabinets.

We had COSMAC (obsolete and cheap) and teletype at work in 1981.

Thank god for Wyse terminals lol. Kansas city magnetic , floppies etc

Ah sure the Altair 8800 looks impressive but I predict that within one hundred years computers will be twice as powerful, ten thousand times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.

amazing. The prime numbers are printed.

It is amazing how SLOW it is when computing the primes! Really shows you how far we have come!

A public service

I worked for Teletype Corporation from January 1967 to October 1977. For a 'side project' I assembled an Altair 680 while still working there. When the project was completed I was allowed to take the Altair home. I still have it.

Very gost

I WORK WHITH THIS IN BRAZIL 1988

Would type in and punch out the odd machining program when the programmers were busy. Never did manage the readable header for part id.

A personal computer, wow!

Absolutely love this series of videos. Unfortunately, the AltairClone is outside of my pandemic budget but if I ever turn things around, I'll make a beeline for one.

totally awesome! What is the actual source code for the bootstrap loader ?

There is something so unmistakably interesting about connecting a TTY and a punch-card reader to a home computer with the power of a terminal. It's an electromechanical union seldom seen in our modern perception of computing.

Error correction. Sounds important. I wouldn't want to do that twice.

If the tape was slower you might as well switch basic in.

Thank god for ROM!!!

This is awesome!!