Talk:Altair BASIC

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[edit] Grammar

Please post the language's EBNF grammar, and highlight the differences between Altair BASIC and other Microsoft BASICS.

[edit] Bootlegging

Re: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC_programming_language

There was mention of me in this article, where it falsly claims I was involved in bootlegging altair basic. This is not true and I resent this connection.

Where did you obtain this information?

John D crunch@shopip.com

I'm surprised that nobody responded to this sooner. Any external sources I can find that connect Mr. Draper to the BASIC bootleggers seem to point back here - questionable indeed. On the other hand, Steven Levy's Hackers refers to Dan Sokol as the "liberator" of Altair BASIC, and I have reassigned the credit/blame for the deed to him.
Beinsane 23:06, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] About Altair 8800

Hi

I'm wondering what should I do with the Altair 8800 with only switches and lights?

Demetano

Hey, do you own one? If so, cool! have you verified that it works? As for your question; if I had a barebone Altair to play with, I'd probably try and use the toggle switches to enter and run a tiny test program consisting of a few Intel 8080 machine code instructions---say, a program that stores a bit pattern in the accumulator and repeatedly shifts the pattern to the left or right; this will display a moving light pattern on the console. Considering the lights are red LEDs, how about that for Christmas? :-) --Wernher 00:38, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Sorry. I don't have an Altair. I was looking for computer history and I found the altair 8800.
So the user must use switches to enter a program and run it to make the red leds flashing.
Now I'm wondering if MITS was released monitor and keyboard after Apple was released Apple 1?
I'd like to see Altair with monitor and keyboard. I like the picture the Altair with a disk drive.
Is true that the Adventure (aka Crystal Cave) was developped on Altair?


Demetano
No. According to the article, Colossal Cave was developed on a PDP-10. – gpvos (talk) 20:00, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Time Frame

It would be nice to know when Altair BASIC was developed. Any idea, anyone? Complainer

[edit] Bootstrap Loader

"While on the plane they each wrote a bootstrap program to read the tape into memory, competing to see who could make it shortest."

Paul Allen went to Albuquerque alone.[1] -- SWTPC6800 05:29, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

From Hard Drive by James Wallace & Jim Erickson. Page 78

By late February they felt they were ready. Allen would be the one to fly out to MITS. On the eve of Allen's appointment with Roberts, Gates told his friend to go home and get some sleep so he would have his wits about him the next day. Gates remained in the computer room, making last-minute fixes in the program. He barely had it ready in time for Allen to catch his early morning flight out of Boston's Logan International Airport. As his plane was on its final approach into Albuquerque, Allen suddenly had a horrible thought. "Oh my God!" he cried out loud, startling the passenger seated next to him. He and Gates had forgotten to write what's known as a "bootstrap," a program that would instruct the Altair how to load BASIC. Writing on a piece of paper in complicated 8080 machine language, Allen had the program completed before the jet's wheels peeled rubber on the runway of the Albuquerque airport. (Later, Allen and the always competitive Gates would have a contest to see who could write the shortest loader program. Gates won.)

Page 82. The use of the PDP-10 caused a flap but there was no written policy on using the PDP-10 for personal use. There soon was a policy, Gates and Allen then bought computer time from a timesharing service.

SWTPC6800 03:45, 20 April 2007 (UTC)