1975 Altair 8800 Computer Loads and Runs Star Trek Game

In which I boot into extended BASIC and load and play “Star Trek” on original computer equipment from 1975.

[@nrnoble]

What I like about this video is that it is shown in real-time and not edited or sped up. It shows what it was really like for those who used the Altair in 1975, which was leading-edge computing at that time. By today's standards, its unbearably slow, but in 1975 it was impressive to be able to have a computer that was smaller than a mainframe that often took up an entire floor of an office building.

[@mrkitty777]

In 1975 the Altair used paper rolls with tiny holes that represented the machine bytes in memory. There was no cassette input. The computer museum has images of it.

[@williamlancto3655]

@@mrkitty777 It looks like in 1975 there was one called the 88-ACR, quick google search shows a couple of documents about it dating from 1975.

[@caturlifelive]

Agreed Neal

[@IrishCarney]

But then it would have taken even longer to load BASIC. No instant boot of BASIC. And having that much RAM in 1975 would have been astonishing and ultra ultra expensive

[@charlesbaldo]

Wow, this was the game that got me into programming. I saw it on a commodore Pet, had to have it, bought the PET,got the program, tore it apart until I understood every line of code. Almost 50 years later I am finishing my career as a software engineer who never went to college.

[@AmstradExin]

48K Of RAM! That's almost a new car!

[@shinyhorse8045]

😄👍

[@notgiven3114]

I built an Altair 8800 in 1975. Actually, just the parts required to build 48K of RAM would have (in 1975 dollars) cost enough to buy 2 new Toyota Corollas at that time. My Altair had only 256 bytes of RAM which came as part of the kit. But in 1977, I built another S-100 bus computer based on a (Vector Graphic) Z-80 motherboard, a Northstar floppy disk controller, somebody's I/O board, and a 4K RAM board kit. That RAM kit cost $477 (1977) dollars. So even then, it would have cost about $5,700 to build 48K of RAM. I never heard of anyone putting more than 16K in a machine during that era. There wasn't much incentive to do so. With the software of the time, a programmer, gamer, etc. would have a hard time coming up with anything that would utilize even that much memory.

[@garyclouse7234]

In 1975 the college I was attending had a particle accelerator. The various counters were interfaced to an Altair 8800. I was NOT a science student so I don't know any more than that. I love watching the registers change when the software is running! I DID play Star Trek but we had to do that on the mainframe. The interface was a teletype and you could type *Star Trek* and hit enter. Then the Tech in the control room would mount the tape and load the program for you.

[@timothycolegrove4365]

Thanks for sharing! I agree. The status lights are part of what makes it great

[@capnrob97]

I played that Star Trek game in a Radio Shack store on the TRS-80 they had on display there. Was cool to be a kid when all the PCs starting coming out.

[@cloerenjackson3699]

Good to see people younger than I am protecting these old beasts.

[@artmaknev3738]

Just amazing, the inventor of Altair is a genious that nobody knows, he should be known as the father of PC!

[@TIATAC]

That PC is so versatile it aint even funny

[@Aeroguy_09]

The makers of it are Microsoft. And the two people who made it are Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

[@Silvertone58]

Totally false. It was invented by Ed Roberts and Forrest M. Mims III

[@sassymenses]

@@Aeroguy_09 you trolling? Microsoft only developed BASIC for it

[@mrkitty777]

Gates found Basic language interpreter in a recycle bin at Harvard it's computer department. Allen and Gates changed it so to run on the Altair instead of a PDP. Gates is well known for modifying existing products and pretending it's his invention. MS Dos was actually Q Dos which Gates bought for 50000 and Q Dos was stolen from Digital Research founder Gary Kildall who was later murdered by a hit on the head. When Gates friend Paul Allen got cancer Bill tried to dispose of him but Allen oerheard Steve Ballmer and Gates dividing his shares of Microsoft by accident. Paul Allen compared Ballmer with a German which i don't mention here.

[@BilalHeuser1]

Its really nice to see classic computer tech like this that is still working today!

[@BizTechSherpa]

This is the best video I have seen of what it was like to use an Altair PC. I started using PCs with a Radio Shack TRS 3 in high school, and a COmmodore Vic-20 at home. But I never understood how to efficiently (for the day) use an Altair from just a few years earlier. The Altair was different to me because of the switches which made it look like something from the 1950s to me in the 1980s. NNow I can see how a terminal made it useful. I even had that same Panasonic Cassette recorder. Very cool!

[@caeserromero3013]

You had time to watch an episode of Star Trek waiting for the game to load...

[@Chris.Davies]

One of the best computer games ever. I used to play it in RT-11 BASIC on a PDP-11 in the early 80s, at school. I seem to recall porting it to my Superboard II in 1983 using PEEK and POKE to the screen to make a zero-scroll version on the game. IIRC I managed to get it to run with 8-bytes of free memory, of my 64KB total, comprising 128x 2114 memory chips! Good times!

[@wrkey]

I played this game on a TRS-80 back in the late 70s'! I thought it was fun and amazing that it worked like it did.

[@mmille10]

I played it on my friend's C-64 in the mid-80s. Good times. :)

[@devcybiko]

Hey Tim - I'm time traveling back from 2022. I'd forgotten how long programs took to load. The "classic" Star Trek game was fun to play in the day - and even more fun to program as it teaches a TON of lessons in computer programming. Thanks for sharing this.

[@ragrabau]

Ah, the days of loaded and storing programs on cassette tape, I remember them well. It also was a great improvement when I got my Northstar Floppy disk drive in 1978. Now my IMSAI, has seen many improvements, including 8 inch floppy drives and 2 20 MB HD's. Slowly restoring my IMSAI back to health as it hasn't run in about 30+ years.

[@timothycolegrove4365]

Robert Grabau I’d like to get cp/m on this machine. The trick is finding and making a disk image

[@ragrabau]

@@timothycolegrove4365 I really depends on the disk controller. If you have brand xyzzy (in which nothing happens), then all you need is the BIOS. Right now there are a few new controllers on the market. The one I am going to use for my new S100 system is the FDC from s100computers.com. This system is a 2 board solution - SBC z80 with on board CF storage (enough to get CP/M running) and the z80 based FDC board to talk to a real 8 inch floppy drive so I can pull a lot of the software I have on the hundreds of 8 inch disks that I have.

[@eileenlucynakurosawa7421]

You have a history device

[@mrkitty777]

Altair ran on paper rolls originally. This modified Altair didn't exist.

[@sideshowrod1312]

I remember playing this game on my Commodore PET and later, on a DEC VAX using a teletype terminal (no screen, just printed the output). Great times!

[@rwfrench66GenX]

OMG, so you’re to blame for deforestation 😂

[@falopatube]

I remember old days when you use a stone to store up to 4 kb. You had to be rich in order to buy a stone writer. There was a hammer inside attached to a spring which made small holes as they represented 0's and 1's. They were read by a brush spinning at 50 rpm. Those pc's were powered by pedals you had to push with your feet.

[@mrkitty777]

I remember a thousand year old Abacus that is driven by hand to calculate fast. It will last another thousand year easily.

[@HupfderFloh]

Teaching sand to think was a mistake, but alas, we wanted miniaturization.

[@TheVicar]

@@mrkitty777 Mine broke after I installed an update

[@mrkitty777]

@@TheVicar lol 😆😄 i got a fatal exception with my abacus when calculating 707 + 707 = 1414 when reading upside down.

[@pSynrg303]

@@mrkitty777 Yeah but does it run Crysis?

[@jamesthompson3099]

Brings back memories. I'm old enough to have built one when they first came out and ran basic on it after Bill released it. Star Trek was an awesome game for the time. Even on my current M1 iMac it looks like fun. 🤣

[@stefansondergaard]

Played that game on a Compucorp computer otherwise used for calculations for 155mm howitzers in the army back in 1983.

[@ladronsiman1471]

I always wanted an Altarir computer ..I recall having the 1974 popular Electronics where it was on the cover ..Time went by and i became an Intel engineer .. and never had that chance ..Ahhhh !

[@ragrabau]

You mean Jan 75 issue which had the Altair 8800 on the cover.

[@reddog68u]

Good lord turning that thing on is like starting an airplane. Thunderbirds we are go.. blastoff

[@Skraeling1000]

My dad used to be a computer engineer on such monoliths as the ICT 1301 (google it). That had to be booted manually, with all the commands linked to lit switches. Oh, and the input was punched cards!

[@reddog68u]

@@Skraeling1000 the uss enterprise 1701 had that type of switches James T Kirk would be so happy seeing this museum piece

[@Skraeling1000]

@@reddog68u Beam me back in time, Scotty!

[@raullamranibueno2780]

The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU.[2] Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics[3] and was sold by mail order through advertisements there, in Radio-Electronics, and in other hobbyist magazines.[4][5] According to Harry Garland, the Altair 8800 was the product that catalyzed the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s.[6] It was the first commercially successful personal computer.[7] The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a de facto standard in the form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft's founding product, Altair BASIC.[8][9] The Altair 8800 had no built-in screen or video output, so it would have to be connected to a serial terminal (such as a VT100-compatible terminal) to have any output. To connect it to a terminal a serial interface card had to be installed. Alternatively to using a terminal Altair could be programmed using its front-panel switches.

[@MrBrad898540]

I remember one of my early experiences with a computer was with an Altair or something similar around 1977 or 78. The Star Trek game was still readily available and I played it as late as 1982.

[@oleksandr3275]

Wow ! It starts like spaceship !

[@eileenlucynakurosawa7421]

Amazing to see this computer actually working. Impressive for that time load software from tape. Dreams factory I think And now we have such a monster power in our pockets today with no surprise or enthusiasm.

[@PointReflex]

We dont get surprised anymore because the leaps in technology are just the standart increment of raw power. Plus, we all have been in touch with technology for more than a decade, so we are very oh so much used to it and know what to expect. People on 1975 barely ever saw, let alone interact, with a home computer, so any kind of change was felt like a groundbreaking achievement.... Because it was.

[@zwebsterz]

Man, that brings back memories from my college days. Thanks!

[@ace942]

I remember playing a similar game on my Atari 800XL. Sometimes our friends would pretend to be on the starship enterprise and one person would be the captain and the other person would be the one executing the command based on what the "captain" said. I forgot how long it used to take to load programs on cassettes. It was so much faster once I got a floppy disk drive.

[@lordsmeagol3390]

Imagine having no ROM and toggling-in the bootstrap loader to load BASIC from paper tape, then load Star Trek from more paper tape!

[@ct92404]

"Damn it, Jim! I'm a doctor, not a computer programmer!"

[@CoconutPete]

I always assumed the 8800 didn't do anything other have the lights blink ha

[@robynmcleod9630]

A friend of mine has a tabletop game called Living Constellations, an interstellar space setting where the tech level is often limited to the 70s or so. Most of my computer knowledge is more mid-80s to late 90s, so I'm watching videos of older stuff to familiarize myself a little more with consumer-level electronics of the time. This video was very freaking cool and useful.

[@nicholasgrippo1754]

Love the terminal. It's what I used for my computer hardware design class. Amazing piece of history and I hope to find one one day.

[@IrishCarney]

Those 70s terminals really had a classic look. Unlike many other old devices (cell phones for instance), they don't look horribly outdated

[@rob1248996]

When I opened the box for my 8800B I got the sinking feeling that there was no way that all these parts could work. But they did. I also had the same feeling for the ADM terminal. Then came the reality that I had no idea what to do with this stuff.

[@scottfranco1962]

That looks very much like my original setup from 1977, except that I saw everyone using a cassette tape and realized that this was a major handicap. I spent most of my money for a floppy disk drive and went to CP/M. Thus, not everyone in this era went with this primitive setup.

[@ericatkinson1412]

I played this game on an HP-200f mini-computer over a modem using an NCR 775 terminal thermal printer. in 1975.

[@robertfrase3846]

This was the VERY first computer (Altair 8800 and while it seems to be a different Star Trek game) I was introduced to by my uncle in May of 1978. But I seem to remember he had the game on an 8" disk drive. The Star Trek game I played was a 10x10 grid.. if my memory holds up. It also had . . . . Periods, *, E. What memories...

[@GNXClone]

I got a listing of this exact game from my step father's mini-computer where he worked. I ported it to Apple-Soft BASIC (Apple-II) when I was 15 years old. That was it, I was hooked on computer programming and have been doing it ever since. Wish I still had that listing. There was another game listing I got too, it was called "wumpus".

[@davidmcfarland2531]

When I was a student at UC Berkeley back in the late 1970’s, my friends and I would go to Evans Hall late at night and play this game with a room full of other students. This was on a PDP 11/70

[@terlinguabay]

I played that on TTY back in '77.

[@shibolinemress8913]

Darn, I was hoping to watch you play a bit! Great video though! In 1975 I was 12 and still several years away from my first computer experience, so these things looked like scifi at the time!

[@pauliewalnuts2527]

This is like a sweet old hot rod for computer nerds

[@cb314]

I remember typing all instructions of this program on Commodore 64 C. It was a looooong day

[@quantumphaser]

I can't believe you're talking about back doors with that girl standing right there.

[@Wagoo]

On the program loading, maybe best to use a cassette deck where you can have speaker and line out activated at the same time so you can just hear when the program is complete

[@hadihassan372]

We’ve come a long way

[@josepherhardt164]

I have a 1980 version of this game that I ported to an IBM PC compatible to run under its BASIC. It had a 6x6 galaxy grid and 10x10 sector grid. Later ported it to compiled DOS BASIC, and later ported it again to Visual BASIC (basically just ran the original version in a text window with a couple of extra button controls). I also saw an IBM mainframe version of this game ca. 1977. I still play it occasionally. At long game, expert level, there are game numbers (random start numbers) that will generate games almost impossible to beat. When you have 88 K's with 6 or so commanders and cross-galaxy tractor beams that can haul your depleted butt into an ambush, what can you do? You can often abandon ship, get traded in a prisoner exchange and wind up as caption of the Faerie Queene. :) In my game, escaping an ambush by attempting to leave the quadrant means the escape direction is randomized--you're not certain where you'll wind up. Good times. Edit: Various versions of this game had different added features. In mine, you can (if subspace radio is still working), ask to have the entire ship teleported to the nearest star base. Because you most often end up as a scattered cloud of atoms, you only use this option when all else fails. In another, the Enterprise had an "experimental death ray." Also only for use in emergency situations. Sometimes it would work and kill all the K's in a sector grid. Sometimes it would kill all life in the galaxy, including you. And sometimes you'd get the message, "DEATH RAY CREATES 2 KLINGONS IN QUADRANT." When the ship's computer got damaged, you found yourself doing on-the-fly arctangents for pointing the torpedoes, and you got to be pretty good at it. In most games, running at warp 10 would, if it didn't blow the engines, occasionally toss you back in time a bit so that you had extra time to kill the remaining Klingons. As I said, good times!

[@georgemaragos2378]

Hi - A great game in many different versions Earliest the heading were i think between 1 and 6 - like a compass Some had computer / calc you entered coordinance and it gave you the angle, you has some leeway if the enemy was at say 3.0 you would score a kill with 2.87 - 3.15 or similar You can obtain the game and the source code to Mike Mayfield original version - very similar to that is displayed on this video A late version around dos 3-4 time saw it using curser keys to nagivate a lotus 123 style menu EGA trek by Nels Anderson is the one you mention with the death ray - i have i think 4 versions of it, it is about 1 of 6 shareware items that i have bought and registered. It is a game i have played for 30 years !! Mostly all the same, except later version you use load or mine, most notable the last versions the star trek key words are removed due to copywrite infingement Regards George

[@josepherhardt164]

@@georgemaragos2378 Thanks so much for the trip down Memory Lane. :)

[@chiappettamark]

That was an amazing game. Romulan antimatter pods and all.

[@joecan]

So intuitive!

[@DA-ou7hv]

She's a beast Scotty...

[@loyaertsthibe9057]

Thanks for the help.

[@AndreasDelleske]

This is how I got into computing around 1979 with an Alpha LSI II and punchtape on a teletype. Loading Startrek took 20 minutes. Loading Basic a little less. We had 16 kWords of RAM for BASIC and application.

[@MAX_DARKIAN]

Holy smokes looks like your starting a airplane

[@troysvisualarts]

Been playing Fallout 3 recently and I bet the inspiration for the 70s style computer terminals in Fallout 3 came from the Altair terminal! Anyways enjoyed the video, very interesting to see how an early computer worked and great to see they can be made to work today!

[@StrawHatTony420]

I've been playing fallout for years and I didnt even think of this until I saw your comment lol. It really does look like a terminal. 😮

[@AlexandrTVOfficialChannel]

@@StrawHatTony420 it looks like a terminal because it is a terminal

[@crazyguyjacob]

@@AlexandrTVOfficialChannel lmao

[@nicsure]

Nice original hardware there.

[@cpnscarlet]

Like running a player piano in 1925. Like playing a wax cylinder in 1935. Like driving a horse and buggy in 1945. Like playing a 78 record in 1965, Like using an adding machine in 1975. Shall I go on?

[@fordprefect80]

What is the load speed from tape on the Altair? On the Commodore 64's datasette the standard transfer rate was about 50 bytes/s.

[@KrautRockt]

hey, dude thanks for upload! ...your GrauKappenHIppieNerd from chemnitz..

[@TheHighSpaceWizard]

I used to have this star trek game on the trs-80 model 3

[@michaelmier9512]

So it is just a cassette tape. Amazing!

[@AudieHolland]

*just a cassette tape* The alternative would have been a big tape recorder. Compact cassette tapes were invented in the 1960s but became a cultural phenomenon in the 1970s and 1980s.

[@user-tx8tm9kz7j]

Интересный канал, и так мало подписчиков, это несправедливо....

[@edivaldojose4294]

nossa que lindo! nunca vi um desses obrigada

[@romanb.6528]

Thanks 👍

[@rty1955]

The fact the front panwl was OCTAL was a huge turn off to me. I MUCH preferred the IMSAI. Prior to the Altair, i had built a small computer based upon the IBM 360 instruction set because I was an IBM assembly lang. programmer since 1969

[@caturlifelive]

Awesome

[@RealMesaMike]

Played the same game on the old IMSAI 8080. Didn't have BASIC in ROM though. Had to load it from cassette first, then load the game. You using the Tarbell cassette interface?

[@youtube-ventura]

Did it play a nice game of chess?

[@michaelheinrich44]

@@youtube-ventura 'worldwide thermonuclear war' i guess 😉

[@agussubekti7381]

Cool Computer

[@adamchalkley956]

Hi Timothy, I'm quite new to the world of the Intel 8080 and Altair 8800. I've came to this video after reading Charles Petzold's "Code second edition". He builds a tapered-down version of the 8080 and describes how this computer used the 8080. I'm wondering how did you manage to get the BASIC interpreter to run on the 8080? Wouldn't you need to toggle the machine instructions into memory by hand(switches)? In other words, how did you get the BASIC interpreter loaded into memory? Thanks

[@timothycolegrove4365]

I have extended BASIC on ROMs on an EPROM card installed in the machine. You can also load BASIC via cassette or paper tape.

[@adamchalkley956]

@@timothycolegrove4365 that's really cool! thanks Timothy

[@Grunchy005]

"I'm not going to play through this game," ??????? but that's what I came to see??

[@verstrahlt1907]

a cute computer

[@markhill3858]

I think I played this game, or very similar, on an Apple II :)

[@user-td9pk7bz6k]

メカニカルキーボード👍

[@albertstadt9853]

Shields Up. Then scan for klingons! I still play this game on my C64 emulator!

[@darronsanderson4837]

"Hey, Computer"...

[@mikecronis]

I actually played this in 1975.

[@timothycolegrove4365]

Awesome

[@LOL-mb9kn]

RIP altair

[@themonsterunderyourbed9408]

How much power does this thing draw?

[@eichi24]

It's really similar at IMSAI 8080 :) the PC anteroom

[@infinitecanadian]

Why are the switches inset into the front panel?

[@timothycolegrove4365]

Not sure what you mean. This is how they are supposed to look. See original advertising material..

[@loganq]

33 lights and not one shows data transfer from the cassette?

[@ameriscm7351]

how did you add a rom to the altair? it boots basic so quick

[@timothycolegrove4365]

I bought a 16k rom card from some old industrial S100 machine and programmed 16 rom chips with extended BASIC using an old chip programmer.

[@MAX_DARKIAN]

My dad told me about this game

[@glen4cindy]

Very interesting and cool video. It’s a little scary that there’s no indication that the data is loading from the tape. How do you know the computer isn’t frozen?

[@SweetTodd]

@@tripplefives1402 He has a point though. How would one figure out why it keeps flashing red lights?

[@simonhanlon7518]

I was expecting a raster version of the Sega vector star trek 😊

[@cholomanaba2770]

rule #7 of the computer programmer: wear climbing boots when programming, in case a mountain suddenly appears in the middle of the computer room.... (sight) those good old days!

[@ikonix360]

In the late 90s I tried a star trek type game and did it in Microsoft Qbasic. Had a divide by zero error I never could figure out. Eventually lost interest in it.

[@andrewjenery1783]

Amazing stuff and takes me back a few years, but how is the USS Enterprise going to destroy 36 Klingon cruisers with 10 photon torpedoes?

[@mrkitty777]

Does not compute

[@talon12020]

You resupplied at a starbase.

[@telengardforever7783]

Back when computers were magical. Now they are just overblown Facebook machines.

[@SweetTodd]

What kind of computer you using that only runs Facebook?

[@ivanscottw]

I wished you could have just typed "LIST" so we could see the program

[@triplebackspace3623]

Computer guy circa 1975 " You betcha boss . I 'm working my butt off down here. Say , I'm starting my program now you want to go to the corner coffee shop with me and grab a cup while it loads."

[@csnyder23]

Except the only coffee shops in most towns was the cafe at Kmart.

[@MrJay197409]

Reminds me of a commodore 64.

[@mallikarjunakaveti8908]

Thank you for posting 🫡

[@Simcore999]

but does it play the star trek song?

[@timothycolegrove4365]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/f4jcf5-Ln5qgiLM

[@Simcore999]

@@timothycolegrove4365 I wanted to hear the: OoooooOooooooOooooOOoOOO one but ok, you got me!

[@goofyahhahhproductions3266]

POV: using the school computers

[@capriomrowkicz1751]

First PC ever?

[@fatihfajral]

👍

[@davidzamora9510]

You can play Doom in that thing

[@surdinkalol]

Login Vault-tec

[@ianmi4i727]

At that time it was necessary to have almost a NASA doctorate to use the Altair efficiently, compared with today!!!!

[@markrosenthal9108]

Anybody remember Creative Computing magazine?

[@mekkabeonik7462]

I wonder if there is anything musical you can do with this?

[@timothycolegrove4365]

Indeed there is! kzbin.info/www/bejne/f4jcf5-Ln5qgiLMsi=uoibZhd7o-_S6GRg

[@mekkabeonik7462]

@@timothycolegrove4365 so it broadcasts radio? am I seeing that right? That's too cool!

[@timothycolegrove4365]

@@mekkabeonik7462 yes. The backplane interferes with AM radio.

[@An_aviator]

That every other dude: But does it run Doom?