Altair 8800 name Was: Re: Altair 680 Expansion Boards?

[Liam Proven]

On 23 December 2016 at 19:34, Michael Holley <swtpc6800 at comcast.net> wrote:
> I was in London in 1981 and happened upon a computer faire. Here is a
> write-up published in Seattle's Northwest Computer Society newsletter. It is
> an American's view of the English computer scene.
> http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/LondonComputerFaire/Newsletter.htm
>
> Photos
> http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/LondonComputerFaire/Photos.htm


Very interesting -- thanks for that!

I'm intrigued that although you prefix notate dollars ($300), you
postfix-notate pounds (125£), when Brits prefix too. Any particular
reason?

I suspect that that was before the home computer gaming boom, and 2-3y
later things would look rather different.

As a student (1985-1988) I attended launches of the CBM Amiga and
Apple ][GS -- I don't recall exactly when -- but they were vastly out
of my price range. In '85 I was still using a ZX Spectrum with ZX
Microdrives; by '87 or '88 I'd managed to get a floppy interface and a
single 5¼" drive (as the media were much cheaper than the new 3½"
diskettes, which were 5×-10× the price).

So even after 16-bit machines started to appear, even fairly serious
hobbyists such as myself continued to use 8-bits & other old-fashioned
tech, as they were massively cheaper.

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