Progress by leaps and bounds

The following is the exchange of messages refered to by Maurice Wilkes in his lecture, `Progress by Leaps and Bounds', delivered to Part 1A students on 11 November 2001.

Messages exchanged by Maurice Wilkes in December 2000 with an American friend whom he had recently visited


Carlos

While I was with you, you mentioned that you had bought one of the original MITS Altar 8800s. You told me how much you had paid for it, but I have forgotten the figure. Could you remind me please?

You also said that having assembled it, you found that it would not work; you took it to the shop where you had bought the kit and an obliging expert rapidly diagnosed the problem and put it right. It was, I think, a bent pin on one of the ICs. Presumably it would have been SSI [Small Scale Integration] in those days.

If you have any more anecdotes relating to your encounter with the Altar 8800, I would be glad to hear them. It is quite a privilege to know someone who bought and owned one of the world's first personal computers. Do you recall its specification?

... Maurice


7 December 2000

Maurice

No, I did not buy the now-famous Altair microcomputer. That computer may or may not have acquired paper tape i/o but initially it required the use of paddle switches and console lights light for i/o. I don't believe the original model had any useful application, but it did establish the S-100 buss, which was used by many companies.

As with most "firsts" there were several. I saw a paper advertising the "Jolt" computer very early in the game, and its name was the subject of considerable mirth at DEC [Digital Equipment Corporation]. But I'm not an authority on early PC's; I was waiting for a useful computer.

I am an expert on the North Star computer, a computer I bought as a kit in 1978. It was perhaps the most exciting purchase in a happy life of kit building -- model airplanes and trains, radios and amplifiers, and a harpsichord. The evening was cold and snowy and the car stalled on the way home from the computer store. I had to get out and go home on foot, leaving the computer kit, which cost $2400, in the trunk of the car.

Eventually, I got my computer home, and I unpacked the boxes beside the Christmas tree. The power supply components were beautiful -- a large, heavy transformer, and big electrolytics in beautiful blue cans. Everything about the kit was excellent -- clear instructions, unambiguous labeling and packaging, nothing missing.

The finished computer was an attractive piece of furniture. Oddly enough, the sides and top of the case were made of wood. Its brushed aluminum front panel had just one light, a little red power light; everything else was on the back. Later, I bought a second North Star and was disappointed that it had a metal cover; concern about RF interference had taken precedence.

Of course the computer had a separate terminal, an ADM-3A "dumb" terminal. I think that was an additional purchase. It was also an attractive object of elegant simplicity. It's remarkable how well the early models compare to their more powerful successors.

That was a useful computer. Although the North Star was quite similar to the Altair, it had an important addition: a floppy drive and the CPM operating system. It may have been the first _practical_ microcomputer. Helen and I used it to write manuals for DEC for years. I ran the wonderful UCSD [University of California at San Diego] Pascal system, which was far ahead of its time and which inspired the Borland company.

Yes, it was a bent pin on a chip that kept my computer from working at the beginning; but it was a memory chip, not one of the logic chips, I think. The man who cheerfully diagnosed the problem (by holding the circuit board sideways against the light) had earlier given me a soldering lesson. He learned soldering when he was in the military, at radar school. All that happened in that little store in Waltham that is now a carpet store; the first computer store in New England, I think.

So it was that I realized my dream of owning a computer. My North Star gave me intense and long lasting pleasure.

Recently, after more than twenty years, I realized a second dream. After years of upgrading, through five or six generations, always paying about $2500, I acquired a computer that has virtually all the power and equipment I want. For the first time, I am not looking forward to a bigger and better computer.

Now my dream is for stable, reliable, well-documented, functionally complete, development software. The outlook is not especially good. I must make do with tools that are "good enough". I spent last night groping the internet trying to find the solution to a problem with the latest version of Borland's C++ Builder. I found other people with the problem, but no one with a solution.

But the hardware is wonderful!

-- Carlos