Hi Rich,
Yeah, I think it was even less than 2 years.? I believe I saw ads for IMSAI as early as Feb 1976 (13 months after ALTAIR's announcement Jan 1975).
On the topic of Octal vs HEX.? I might make some enemies here, but I believe HEX is better.
The original owner of my Altair put (zippo) tape over every other 4 switches (HEX visual cues).
While the 8080 instruction set is geared towards Octal, I will dare to say it's easier to enter a program in HEX.
Because in HEX, you only need to remember 2 characters.? I am guessing someone with a good memory (not me) could probably read and retain 8 bytes of data then enter them into the computer, while the same person might only be able to do 4 bytes of Octal.
The only con about HEX are the letter codes... but with a little practice, those become 2nd nature.
Besides, I've never been a fan of 377 377, I mean, how can 377 377 be the same as 177777 ?
I think most will agree HEX just fits in nicer.? Now if only we can change the alphabet..? 26 is such an odd number!
Here's a weird thought... what would computer programming look like if we still used Roman Numerals?
X? Print "Hello"
XX Goto X
LoL
