Altair Collectors Association

Hmmm.... Fascinating. After reading some of the sentiments posted recently, what I'm hearing is that the price of Altair's is a bubble without underlying value, that is, they may be somewhat rare but aren't really great machines, like a Ferarri or whatever, and that the BASIC software for it wasn't very innovative. I dunno, maybe there wouldn't be such interest if Micro-soft hadn't become the juggernaught it is today, and MITS would have been relegated to the dustbin of history. However - I do see it as the 'Model-T' of PERSONAL computing - sure everything had been done before but was usually priced out of the average joe/jane's reach unless they worked in a research institute or business, in which case they weren't always allowed free reign to do whatever they wanted. Also the Altair was a very open hardware platform, you had the schematics, you got the educational experience of actually building and usually repairing it; the more experienced could add just about anything they could dream of plus all the published construction articles one could build on their kitchen table without applying for a govt. research grant. I'll yield the floor now but more later ;O Chuck cswiger(a)widomaker.com