Re:Altair 8800 – Loading 4K BASIC with a Teletype [video]
by robterrell on Monday May 26, 2014 @04:44PM
(#7801548)
I remember doing this for my dad... sitting in his computer store, entering bytes of the boot-loader program by flipping switches. In my memory, it took much longer than in the video. The computer was an Altair clone, one of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYhbzCAzNy0 and the paper-tape reader was also different (not connected to a teletype, just a stand-alone paper tape reader with a serial port) so I guess it was a different bootloader entirely.
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Re:Altair 8800 – Loading 4K BASIC with a Teletype [video]
by femto on Monday May 26, 2014 @10:09PM
(#7802527)
At one point I worked on an over-the-horizon radar, where the control room was at the receiver site, about 100km from the transmitter site. It had changed by the time I was there, but the old techs used to tell of having to enter the bootloader, for the computer at the transmitter site, via radio link. If the link went down, you had to start again...
Re:Altair 8800 – Loading 4K BASIC with a Teletype [video]
by burnte on Monday May 26, 2014 @06:08PM
(#7801892)
The boot loader very well may have been the same, as the paper tape reader would output the same bitstream regardless of the reader. It's basically flipping switches (transistors) to get ready to receive data from the serial port and put it into memory starting at a specific address.
Re:Altair 8800 – Loading 4K BASIC with a Teletype [video]
by jeffbarr on Monday May 26, 2014 @06:33PM
(#7801954)
I bet that was the Oliver Audio Engineering reader, as shown at http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/OAE80_Reader/OAE80_Index.htm . I never did manage to get mine to work.