Altair 8800 Operator's Manual v2.0

[ubuntourist]

So.

I've been helping a class of high school students who are studying the Altair, and, though I like old tech well enough, I've never been a fan of scans of copies of faxes of 45-year-old, coffee-stained printouts with ink peeling off of them. (Yes, I know, that's a slight exaggeration. But still...) Also, I like links and cross-references.

So, to that end, I converted the document to HTML, and have been slowly adding new tidbits to it. The new stuff is a bit "stream of consciousness" / "off the top of my head" notes, but still useful to the newbie, I hope. Honestly, when it comes to the Altair, I'm a newbie myself. But I've dealt with several mainframe assembler languages, and at least one machine where I had to toggle stuff into a front panel. So, not a big leap.

For your viewing pleasure, I present:

https://ubuntourist.codeberg.page/Altair-8800/

with additons:

• PART 0: PREFACE: COLOPHON, CREDITS, ETC.
• APPENDIX B: SETTING UP LINUX FOR ALTAIR 8800
• ADDENDUM: FAST FORWARD - 2020
• RESOURCES
• INDEX (instructions and mnemonics, currently)

Some of those may end up getting combined or eliminated, as there's a bit of redundancy in a couple of places. And I may end up renaming some of the files. So don't depend on the URLs of the above sections staying constant. (I expect I'll keep the root URL provided at the top of this message.)

Oh, and I added a wee bit to the section on the Exclusive Or in Part 1: Introduction, Section B: Electronic Logic.

[AltairClone]

Wow, that's a lot of work! Great looking job.

Mike

[jibanes]

That's great, is there a pdf version? So I could read it on the go.

[toml_12953]

So.

I've been helping a class of high school students who are studying the Altair, and, though I like old tech well enough, I've never been a fan of scans of copies of faxes of 45-year-old, coffee-stained printouts with ink peeling off of them. (Yes, I know, that's a slight exaggeration. But still...) Also, I like links and cross-references.

So, to that end, I converted the document to HTML, and have been slowly adding new tidbits to it. The new stuff is a bit "stream of consciousness" / "off the top of my head" notes, but still useful to the newbie, I hope. Honestly, when it comes to the Altair, I'm a newbie myself. But I've dealt with several mainframe assembler languages, and at least one machine where I had to toggle stuff into a front panel. So, not a big leap.

For your viewing pleasure, I present:

https://ubuntourist.codeberg.page/Altair-8800/

When you were searching for the copyright holder, did you check out Pertec Computer Corporation which bought MITS or Scan-Optics LLC which bought Pertec? They should still own MITS IP although I can't imagine they'd care about someone reprinting the manuals.

Tom L

[Curto]

This is really great! Thank you for taking the time. Is there a PDF formatted version that we could print?

[Wayne Parham]

Super groovy cool!

[MajorClements]

So.

I've been helping a class of high school students who are studying the Altair, and, though I like old tech well enough, I've never been a fan of scans of copies of faxes of 45-year-old, coffee-stained printouts with ink peeling off of them. (Yes, I know, that's a slight exaggeration. But still...) Also, I like links and cross-references.

So, to that end, I converted the document to HTML, and have been slowly adding new tidbits to it. The new stuff is a bit "stream of consciousness" / "off the top of my head" notes, but still useful to the newbie, I hope. Honestly, when it comes to the Altair, I'm a newbie myself. But I've dealt with several mainframe assembler languages, and at least one machine where I had to toggle stuff into a front panel. So, not a big leap.

For your viewing pleasure, I present:

https://ubuntourist.codeberg.page/Altair-8800/

with additons:

• PART 0: PREFACE: COLOPHON, CREDITS, ETC.
• APPENDIX B: SETTING UP LINUX FOR ALTAIR 8800
• ADDENDUM: FAST FORWARD - 2020
• RESOURCES
• INDEX (instructions and mnemonics, currently)

Some of those may end up getting combined or eliminated, as there's a bit of redundancy in a couple of places. And I may end up renaming some of the files. So don't depend on the URLs of the above sections staying constant. (I expect I'll keep the root URL provided at the top of this message.)

Oh, and I added a wee bit to the section on the Exclusive Or in Part 1: Introduction, Section B: Electronic Logic.

Awesome improvement over the original, but I got to say that my eyes widened when I saw “Apendix B: Setting up Linux for the Altair 8800.” I was hoping that entailed a full install of linux on the Altair.