| ▲ | starik36 a day ago | ||||||||||||||||
The screenshot of the source code at the end of the article is a ton of printed code. How was it then entered into the Altair? Did someone have to retype it? Or was there media that predated floppies that was used? | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | ndiddy a day ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||
It was distributed on paper tape. You needed a teletype with a paper tape reader to run it. Basically you would manually enter a bootloader using the switches on the Altair's front panel, and the bootloader would read BASIC off the tape and into RAM. If the checksum passed, it would then jump into BASIC. Here's a video of the process if you're interested: https://youtu.be/TxU_3dEJ2nM?t=1013 | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | ttkari a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||
It was stored on a punched paper tape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC#Origin_and_develo... | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | richardwhiuk a day ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||
Paul Allen entered it in front of the customer for the first run https://paulallen.com/Futurist/Microsoft.aspx I expect it was distributed on tape as well. | |||||||||||||||||
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