Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

kinds of gratification that a human being can possess," he would say, "ego andwallet. That's it, baby. If you got those you're in business. It was my job to getarticles. There was another magazine [Radio Electronics], which was also doingdigital things. They came out with a computer kit based on the Intel 8008.1 knewthe 8080 could run rings around it. I talked to Ed Roberts, who had publishedthings about his calculators in our magazine, about his computer, and I realized itwould be a great project in the magazine. Hopefully, I would get a raise."But Solomon knew that this was not just another project, and in fact there weremany factors here beyond ego and wallet. This was a computer. Later on, whencoaxed, Les Solomon would speak in hushed terms of the project he was about tointroduce to his readers: "The computer is a magic box. It's a tool. It's an art form.It's the ultimate martial art... There's no bullshit in there. Without truth, thecomputer won't work. You can't bullshit a computer, God damn it, the bit is thereor the bit ain't there." He knew of the act of creation that is a natural outgrowth ofworking with the computer with a hacker's obsessive passion. "It's where everyman can be a god," Les Solomon would say.So he was eager to see Ed Roberts' machine. Ed Roberts sent him the onlyprototype via air freight, and it got lost in transit. The only prototype. So Solomonhad to look at the schematics, taking Roberts' word that the thing worked. Hebelieved. One night, he flippantly asked his daughter what might be a good namefor this machine, and she mentioned that on the TV show "Star Trek" that evening,the good ship Enterprise was rocketing off to the star called Altair. So it was thatEd Roberts' computer was named Altair.Roberts and his design helper Bill Yates wrote an article describing it. In January1975, Solomon published the article, with the address of MITS, and the offer tosell a basic kit for $397. On the cover of that issue was a phonied-up picture of theAltair 8800, which was a blue box half the size of an air conditioner, with anenticing front panel loaded with tiny switches and two rows of red LEDs. (Thisfront panel would be changed to an even spiffier variation, anchored by a chromestrip with the MITS logo and the legend "Altair 8800" in the variegated type fontidentified with computer readouts.)Those who read the article would discover that there were only 256 bytes (a "byte"is a unit of eight bits) of memory inside the machine, which came with no input oroutput devices; in other words, it was a computer with no built-in way of gettinginformation to or from the world besides those switches in front, by which youcould painstakingly feed information directly to the memory locations. The onlyway it could talk to you was by the flashing lights on the front. For all practicalpurposes, it was deaf, dumb, and blind. But, like a totally paralyzed person whosebrain was alive, its noncommunicative shell obscured the fact that a computer brain