Mitts Altair 8800 Microcomputer started a wonderful friendship

MITS Altair 8800 Started Friendship

Click on photo to enlarge

L-R John Simkiss, Altair 8800
 SN414 and David Larsen - 2015

This Altair - one of several dozen in my "Bugbook Histroical Microcomputer Collection" has many stories to tell. One is John's visit last Sunday 3/8/20 to fly down from Philadelphia in his private plane and have breakfast with my wife Gaynell and I. one more story is the day he picked up the Altair 8800 in 2015.  Many more however in  this blog I will discuss these two.

John's Aircraft is a
Red "Cirrus"

John told me he would meet at 8:30 AM and he landed at 8:31- great timing into the Blacksburg/Montgomery airport on the Virginia Tech Campus.

That is John and Gaynell in photo to left just after touchdown. We had delightful conversation during breakfast at the Inn at Virginia Tech.

John needed to be back in Philadelphia at 1:00 PM and he sent me a photo showing the Cirrus  tied down at 12:59 P M.

This video really tells the story of John picking up the Altair 8800 in 2015. Interesting "CLICK"

Inside view of Altair 8800
SN 414.

This Altair 8800 SN414 was probably in the first or second production run.  Ed Robert the Founder of the MITS company expected about 500 orders for his computer and was inundated with 5000 orders the first month.  This is a very low serial number and a valuable microcomputer.

The earliest Altair 8800 in my collection was SN 21. I purchased this 8800 from a fellow that was one of the dozens that drove down to Albuquerque, New Mexico and waited in the parking lot of the MITS companty to get there Altair first before shipments began. Altair 8800 SN21 is now located at the "Computer Museum of America"  in Roswell GA along with the other 13,000 items in my historical microcomputer collection.

John looking at
MARK 8 during
2015 visit..

Here is a blog about the Altair 8800 SN414 and John's 1995 visit. 

Video of Altair 8800 SN414 in operation tested by Wen Heagy.

John describes his visit to the  Computer Museum in his own words 1995

Chicago downtown from
John's Cirrus aircraft.

Just received (3/30/20) this photo from John - photo  he made of the Chicago Skyline on flight to pick up one of his family members. Nice to have your own plane at this time with conoronvirus restrictions on  commercial  air travel. Great view.






Collecting historical microcomputers for more than 45 years and teaching about "Computers and Instrumentation " for 33 years at Virginia Tech has been the experience of a lifetime.  Many I have had many great times and met wonderful people during this time. You can see a few of the stories on my Blog Site.

David Larsen
 Blog Author

"by David Larsen"  Chantilly Farm owner, Computer Historian, and amateur radio operator -KK4WW   & N4USA .  I work out of one of the Tiny Homes at Chantilly Farm. A great place to work if you like the to be out in nature. I am 81 and ready to sell Chantilly Farm - I have a few more  projects I would like to do - if you have an interest to know more give me a call. 540 392 2392

MITS Altair 8800 SN414 Microcomputer goes to new home

John Simkiss

It was a pleasure to have John Simkiss visit our  Computer Museum & Warehouse to pick up the Altair 8800 to take home for his collection. We spent the day having great conversations about the history of microcomputer and the people that made it happen. It was fun and a lot of reminiscing about old times while touring the museum warehouse with thousands of items from my 40+ years of collection microcomputer memorabilia.

Introducing John to our tiny village of Floyd,Virginia (419 folks here) and a tour of our Chantilly Festival Farm project along with some good meals made for a great day.

John describes his visit to the  Computer Museum in his own words
    A video of the MITS Altair 8800 transfer from the museum to John Simkiss. - "CLICK"

Click photo to enlarge

LR John Simkiss - David Larsen

This is a happy John Simkiss with his new addition of the Altair 8800 to his collection and the  Computer Museum curator on the right David Larsen.

This Altair 8800 was restored by Win Heagy to make it fully functional.

I will miss this computer however it will be replaced by one from our museum warehouse. I also have a lower serial number Altair 8800 - Number 0021 here is video  "CLICK".

John Simkiss with Titus 8080 Octal Code Card

John went  home with several additional historical microcomputer items including this "John Titus's 8080 Octal code card shown in the photo.

Several other first of a kind from our museum collection for John - One of the first Intel 8 bit microprocessor chips the 8008 and a never out of the box - one of the very first Intel EPROM chips the 1702A.

John added some nice items to our museum collection as well as taking some home - he donated  HP 41C, HP41CX, HP 19B2 calculators with manuals. Really nice addition. I think that 19B Business Consultant 2 will be used in our business in addition the museum collection.

John pointing our the MARK-8 computer

John pointing out one of our MARK-8 computers on display in the museum.

Here is a full audio description of this display case including the MARK-8 -- "CLICK"

Apple computer display

Looking over part of our Apple microcomputer displays. We also made a visit to the local bank vault where our museum's original Apple-1 computers are stored for a good look. More about our original Apple-1 computers look here "CLICK"







Here is a video of this Altair in operation tested by Win Heagy  "CLICK"

Altair original CPU board version  0

A peak inside John's Altair at an original MITS CPU board revision 0 with serial number in the 400's on the board.

C8080A Intel Microprocessor

Original C8080A microprocessor chip in the Altair.

1K MITS Altair RAM memory

Original 1K MITS Altair RAM memory board revision 0 and serial number 451 with computer sn 414.
Video of memory board.

First version of the Atair 8800 manual -Video.

David G Larsen

This was just a fun day with John reminiscing about microcomputer history in our little town of Floyd, Virginia.

 "by David Larsen"  Chantilly Farm owner, Computer Historian, and amateur radio operator -KK4WW   & N4USA .  I work out of one of the Tiny Homes at Chantilly Farm. A great place to work if you like the to be out in nature. I am 81 and ready to sell Chantilly Farm - I have a few more  projects I would like to do - if you have an interest to know more give me a call. 540 392 2392

      
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Altair 8800 Computer for sale

The computer has been sold - thank you to all that inquired about this Altair. 

info click

MITS ALTAIR 8800 computer for  Sale. This computer has been restored to working order by Win Heagy. Win has been a vintage computer collector for years and has restored many old computers including an original Digital Equipment PDP-8 minicomputer (PDP-8 work is still in progress). The ALTAIR 8800 is in nice condition and displays very nicely. I have posted many photo's below to show various aspects of the computer and the documentation that comes with the 8800. It is nice to have this computer operational and ready for a new home after resting in our museum warehouse for more then 25 years.

The computer serial number is 220414K and I believe the numbering started at 220000 --- that would make this number 414 in order of production. The K at the end of the serial number indicates that the computer was sold as a kit and it was up to the purchaser to assemble and test the product. The low serial number would put the computer in the first month or two of production by Ed Roberts "MITS" company --- a nice early ALTAIR 8800 computer.

Video of computer in various modes of operation "CLICK".

Contact me here for purchase or more information.

An ALTAIR 8800 sold today on Ebay for $9001 and a few weeks ago one sold for about $10,000. If mine does not sell soon I will remove it for sale and put it on Ebay. 4-12-15 - Checking the Ebay sale -- it did not make the reserve price so hi bid was $9001 but no sale.

Click on photo's to enlarge

Altair 8800

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This card  has a serial # on the card of 0456K.

Altair 8800

Altair 8800

This card has a serial number of 0457K.

Altair 8800

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Win Heagy and his PDP-8 computer 

Here is Win Heagy picking up his PDP-8 at our computer warehouse.


More info about Win's PDP-8 "CLICK"





Here are some comments about the ALTAIR 8800 computer by Win Heagy.

1. Runs warm with the cover on.  If you plan to use it for extended
periods of time, consider installing a fan.
2. Some small dings and marks on the exterior, as is to be expected in
a 35+ year old machine.
3. In order to modify the original hardware as little as possible, an
extension cable was made for the original 2SIO serial cable.  A large
piece of white heat shrink tubing covers the DB25 connectors of this
extension cable and the original cable.  This extension can be removed
or reworked as desired.
4. The 4K RAM card was used for loading 4K BASIC in the video.
5. The MITS 1K Static RAM card was not extensively tested.  The RAM
test routine I have did not seem to work properly on this card.
However, as is seen in the video, I toggled in the “Kill the Bit”
program from the front panel using this card as the RAM card and it
works.  The RAM chips are soldered on this board.
6. Most of the documentation included with the system is not original.
Most of the manuals and other documentation is available online.
7. The 2SIO card is picky.  Be sure to use a good quality USB->Serial
adapter - or a real serial port on a PC.  The 2SIO expects serial
level voltages and some adapters cheat a little.  I had four different
adapters and only one worked.
8. A second serial cable/connector is included for the second port on
the 2SIO card.  This cable and port was not tested.

David Larsen

I am selling this and other duplicate computers from the collection to help pay the rent in the commercial rented space used by our museum. We try to have the museum open regular hours and have paid help as assistant curators in the museum. We live in a very rural area of the Blue Ridge mountains and not many retro computer folks to volunteer in the museum. Our little town of Floyd, Virginia only has a population of about 400. The county population is small and we are in a beautiful place with 42 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway as our Eastern boundary. The county is agriculture based and is known for it wonderful mountain music and many very creative artisans. 

           .^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}