My first ALTAIR as I have two was purchased December 1974 and arrived with serial number 200.
Built it and used it for two years before condemning it to storage. Replacing it with a
NorthStar Horizon.? Later a Netronics 8085 Explorer, Compupro.? Then along the way real hardware
PDP-8? and PDP-11s where more time programing than fixing was the rule.

One reason was binary blisters terrible switches.? The other was the early design (there were about
3 major versions) was such that it may take several tried to load anything from tape (audio or paper).
Mine was retired due to the green plague, the side effect of gold over copper without nickle plate
and mixing that with?solder plate edge connectors.? By time I'd gotten past that the only thing
still stock was the one-shot laden front panel (hit deposit and get two or none).? I considered that
was a sign, get something better.? I still feel the flakiness was a handicap to programming.? ?
It was a mad crazy time when 4K bytes of ram?cost about a 100$ a K.??

I keep it for the fact that it has history in my collection of systems and some fool might
offer four digits for it.? It was the first kit however some of the followers were designed
and made better.

Allison