From the history of Microsoft (part 1)

[jim bell]

 On Saturday, October 3, 2020, 04:42:00 AM PDT, Georgi Guninski <gguninski at gmail.com> wrote:
 
 
 >From my blog: https://j.ludost.net/blog/archives/2020/10/03/from_the_history_of_microsoft_part_1/index.html

>Markdown source follows.

>From the history of Microsoft (part 1)

>by Georgi Guninski Sat 03 Oct 2020 08:51:30 AM UTC, version 1.0


My little tidbit of Microsoft history. 
In about January 1976, a friend/co-worker of my father (his name was Vern Stevenson, the company was Marley Inc, maker of Cooling Towers) drove me to one of the hotels nearby relatively new KCI (Kansas City International Airport), for a small meeting.  Some people from MITS (that's Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) were doing a demonstration of the MITS Altair computer, This was a bit more than one year after the appearance of the Altair computer on thehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Electronics   

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Popular Electronics

A cover story on Popular Electronics could launch a new product or company. The most famous issue, January 1975,...
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The Altair had generally been seen as the initial step of the 'personal computer' era.    (although I recall a different computer called a "Jolt" http://retro.hansotten.nl/6502-sbc/jolt-and-super-jolt/jolt/ being advertised for a year or so.   Although, I don't know if my recollection is wrong, it said this came out in December 1975.)
 I think it was about $500, but every feature was 'extra'.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800    No keyboard, no display (other than a few dozen LEDs on the front), just a few switches on the front.  And, for a year or more, the price of USED teletypes went up to about $1000, because they provided the all-important keyboard, printer, and even a paper-tape punch and reader.    The initial design didn't even include a bus, although a quick design resulted in the execrable S-100 bus, apparently "designed" by a person who didn't know how to design computer buses, or didn't even know what a "bus" was for!  
During the January 1976 KCI meeting, they talked about a 4K byte Basic interpreter.  They said that the supplier, "Microsoft" (which at that time was probably 2-3 people) sold the source code for the Basic for about $4,000.   I can remember being very UNIMPRESSED at that price.  
Not too many years later, I decided i had made a mistake by NOT buying one of the Altairs.  But I was cheap (though I had the money!), and the first computer I bought was a single-board trainer called the "Dyna-Micro".   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-board_computer   Later called the "MMD-1".
            Jim Bell





  
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