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2022-08-26
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Now the fun really started! In
February, Harvard drop-out Paul Allen
met with Ed Roberts, owner of MITS,
to demonstrate a BASIC interpreter
for the Altair, written by fellow
drop-out Bill Gates. Despite never
having touched an Altair before, the
BASIC worked flawlessly. Gates and
Allen licensed their BASIC to MITS,
creating the first commercial
computer language program written for
a personal computer.
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BASIC fit nicely into 4 KB of
memory leaving enough room -- several
hundred bytes -- for BASIC programs.
As the home computer revolution took
hold in the early 1980s, Microsoft
BASIC became the most prolific
programming language in the world,
counting installations.
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It was also the source of
controversy. At that time, most
computer owners traded software with
each other with no thought of buying
programs. When Gates and Allen
finished Altair BASIC, they wanted to
sell it to MITS and other hardware
manufacturers. But just before it
shipped, John Draper managed to get
hold of a paper tape containing the
program and gave copies away for
free. He went so far as to state that
he'd give it to anyone, as long as
they would make two new copies and
give them away.
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This made Bill Gates furious,
leading to his famous Open Letter to
Hobbyists, denouncing piracy. He
focused on two problems: that Draper
had acquired a tape and copied it;
and that the copy was an early, buggy
version, making Altair BASIC look
bad. Bill Gates and Paul Allen
founded Micro-Soft in April, while
MITS delivered the first generally-
available Altair 8800 with 1 KB
memory, which sold for $375.
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This was just the opening shot.
Steve Wozniak met Steve Jobs at the
Homebrew Computer Club of Palo Alto,
CA. They came to the conclusion that a
completely assembled and inexpensive
computer would be in demand. Selling
some of their prized possessions, they
raised $1300, and assembled their
first prototype in Jobs' garage. It
was an engineering marvel in 1975. In
simplicity of use, it went years ahead
of the Altair
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Then, in April, MOS Technology (a
company composed of engineers who
developed the Motorola 6800)
announced the 6501, which could be
plugged into existing motherboards
that used the 6800. This enraged
Motorola, which immediately sued,
forcing MOS to pull the 6501 from the
market. Changing the pin layout
produced the "lawsuit-friendly" 6502.
Otherwise identical to the 6501, it
nevertheless had the disadvantage of
having no machines in which new users
could quickly start playing with the
CPU. Chuck Peddle, leader of the 650x
group at MOS designed the KIM-1 in
order to fill this need.
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