Altair 8800 vs AMD Threadripper: Which is Faster? We test them!

[@jamesmartin3133]

Another example of why I keep coming back to this channel. A perfect mix of technical knowledge, history, and humor.

[@raven4k998]

seriously is this supposed to be a joke the altar does not even stand a chance in this test🤣🤣🤣

[@JroJamoJames]

AND production values!

[@Psythik]

I had no idea that someone with autism could be so sarcastic. Videos like this are why I keep coming back!

[@DavesGarage]

Thanks for the kind words! Glad you liked this one!

[@DeathMetalDerf]

Well said indeed!!!

[@Steamrick]

It's funny to think that the C64 RAM can fit in the threadripper's cache. Not the L3 cache, either - the core's L1 cache is big enough.

[@DavesGarage]

Oh, I wish I would have thought of that! Where were you when I was writing this :-)

[@ncot_tech]

You could get the entire RAM of the Altair in the Threadripper's *registers*

[@DevynCairns]

​@@ncot_techeven more if you consider all of the internal registers. I'm not sure how many there are, but modern speculative processors, especially x86 tend to have hundreds more registers than they actually present architecturally so that they can do all kinds of fancy optimizations. In a way, modern processors are statistically-influenced optimizing JIT compilers for their architectural machine code into a massively more complex real machine architecture, and that's pretty neat

[@UncleKennysPlace]

@@ncot_tech EllOhEll for sure.

[@arandomperson8336]

@@DevynCairns The details of particular implementations are abstracted away to present a common interface. It happens at the hardware level and again at the OS level. I think it's amazing it all runs as fast it does when any given piece of code has to deal with a minimum of two layers of abstraction to do anything at all.

[@RB9522]

I love it. After waiting several months to get the parts kit, I built the computer from Jan 1975 Popular Electronics. It took weeks to get it to work. But, I implemented some math functions in machine language using the descriptions in the manual for my HP-25C calculator. I learned a lot. It is a fond memory these days.

[@TrudgeRC]

Been tossing up between the two for a while now. This helps a lot - thanks Dave.

[@RichardDzien]

An important comparison to be sure! It's insane to think that the Threadripper can do more iterations per second that the Altair could have done if it was set going in 1975 and was left cycling it until now!

[@raven4k998]

not really how fast was the altars cpu running at think about it and it's single core vs the thread ripper which has more cores then the altar could ever dream of so it makes sense it's progress for you just like it's progress when I say to an employer I can do shipping and receiving and they say nope cause I do not have data entry and then some employers comes along tests me and finds out oh shit I have IT training which is not in my educational records anywhere and I have a huge hole there in my records😍😍🥰🥰😘😘🥰🥰😍😍

[@mirknight]

@@raven4k998 Are you confused or is it just me?

[@paulstubbs7678]

So if someone gives you a complex task to compute, that's going to run for ages, then maybe you should just not bother but rather wait for a new machine that can do it faster......

[@stephanbrunker]

Someone wrote that a Raspberry Pi 1 ist actually as fast as a Cray-1 supercomputer from 1976 (130 MFLOPS).

[@Machistmo]

Lol important

[@DavesGarage]

I can't find where I heard it now, but someone pointed out to me that if the Altair had started on the primes in 1977, and left running ever since, the Threadriipper would still win!

[@Shogoeu]

1:00 - 6:30 - History lesson 6:30 - 14:00 - Altair 8800 internals and repair 14:20 - Programming starts 14:55 - Altair 8800 answer 15:45 - Threadripper ripping

[@DavesGarage]

Thanks, I added your timings to the description!

[@hgarland]

Lovely video, Dave. Replacing the CPU with our ZPU will gain you a quick factor of two in speed. It was my honor, along with the late Roger Melen, to name the S-100 bus, and I appreciate your clear and accurate video describing that era of computer history.

[@JollyGiant19]

I appreciate the confident use of eval at 17:39 😁 For those who don't know, running 240 / 0.0082185 without the eval part would have been enough for PowerShell but the handy calculator is always there!

[@diynevala]

I've been programmer hobbyist for 36 years and of that time 25 years professionally. Still, I find this content great and I keep learning new.

[@darak2]

Once attached to a terminal and with BASIC, the Altair looks surprisingly usable. I always thought those machines were some kind of early experiments without any real use case, something that you needed to program using the switches.

[@BB-iq4su]

I used an Imsai 8080 to calculate best trading buy/sell points of 14 Futures contracts in 1976-77.

[@ordinaryk]

With a boot ROM and floppy drives, it could run the CP/M operating system, making it not only usable, but even practical.

[@customsongmaker]

It couldn't do much of anything when it was first sold, just the switches and lights. Then Bill Gates and his partner were the ones who made a program that allowed it to communicate with other input and output devices.

[@dh2032]

@@ordinaryk the boot ROM, or what might of been card a BIOS, to load first low level switch movements to get things moving and all the switches are then just for show/ at least trouble shouting, try doing with only power and reset button on the ripper?

[@briancampbell179]

My first computer was the SYM-1 maxxed out to the full 4K of RAM and using an old telex machine talking baudot code through a translator I wrote. It had BASIC and I did some assignments from university on it back in the late 70's. We did know how to make these things useful.

[@hhp3]

As someone who built an S100 computer from scratch and wrote a lot of 8080 machine code (including an assembler I hand-assembled), I LOVED YOUR VIDEO!!!

[@Lord-Sméagol]

That's bootstrapping; hand assembling an assembler so you can then assemble a better version :) This is a bit like an interactive compiler I developed in the 80's [Z80 for CP/M] and 90's [68000 for Amiga] which was written in itself and you could modify it on the fly. You could do crazy things like: EDIT IF and it would decompile the function that compiles IF statements and let you change it and compile the new version back into the running compiler! I had to 'hand-compile' in assembler the core functions that would allow it to then compile the rest of itself from disk.

[@TRMasterZED]

PC-Selection comes down to "Are you looking for a lot of switches?" That made my day. Thank you for this.

[@timothynustad4133]

Runs in 74 seconds on a Z80 processor clocked at 7.3MHz. This was running MSBASIC under CPM on an RC2014 Z80 kit computer. Thanks for the entertaining video and for posting the code in github!

[@WasickiG]

I tried it on the MSX computer: 214 s (Z80 @ 3.579MHz), resident BASIC by Microsoft not Z80-optimized as is was based on their original interpreter for the 8080 microprocessor. 280 seconds with MBASIC (not compiled).

[@axonis2306]

The Threadripper came penultimate whereas the Altair was 2nd. Amazing performance from the Altair, hope Threadripper does better in the future.

[@XmarkedSpot]

So close to 500k! Very happy to see you gaining the well deserved traction

[@Cuperino]

Congratulations Dave, by experimentally demonstrating on camera something that is mathematically obvious, you have earned the title of Honorary Mythbuster. The only thing left to do is overclock the Altair to the frequency of the Threadripper, and record it when it catches fire.

[@ehsnils]

I'd just consider to run the output per megaherz performance to better compare them.

[@Harvey_Pekar]

That's what the liquid nitrogen is for.

[@ModelLights]

'Honorary Mythbuster' If you do it while it's all suspended from a lead balloon it might even be worthy of full Mythbuster status.. And spill some blue for comic effect. If you didn't already see AS:Tested why his hands were blue video from the other day you should watch it, best laugh I've had in ages.

[@fnaaijkens69]

How dare you even suggest to melt the lovingly restored Altair! Sacrilege! 🙂

[@MrJok3rz]

THis does beg the question... Can you overclock the 8800??? And how fast before it starts to glitch out. Then... How fast until fire.

[@BuckeyeStormsProductions]

I didn't realize how much I was lacking a computer with a lot of switches in my life until just now. Thanks! You've sold me on the Altair.

[@neeosstuff7540]

Dave, you have an amazing ability to make a completely senseless race very very entertaining and informative. Thank you.

[@cogito451]

Dave, I say this without any hyperbole: the world is a better place with you in it. Thanks, bro.

[@carlsneyd1315]

To really be fair Dave should add in modern management techniques for the thread ripper ; so at least 2-3 agile sprints to talk about set up and running the code make PowerPoints etc: so 30 working days + 1/10,000,000s.

[@guywilkinson]

Sadly, so true 😂 in this modern world 🌍

[@thegreatdeconstruction]

Great video - I believe I mentioned in another of your videos that the creator of the Altair/MITS was a personal friend as well as my primary physician for several years, he was a brilliant man named H Edward Roberts and I had the opportunity to see his personal Altair in action . He gave me a lot of encouragement to dive deeper into the history of computing as well as to advance my career.

[@brandonwhite6421]

It's so mind-boggling how far processing power has come, particularly for problems that parallelize well.

[@PeranMe]

Thanks Dave, you bring warm feelings to my heart. Keep being awesome!

[@rdwatson]

Asking the important questions we all need answered. :) I was rooting for the Altair!

[@caldodge]

I didn't have a MITS, but I did start with a TRS-80 Model 1 in 1978. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

[@RiverMersey]

A completely serious test - measured on a mechanical stopwatch!😀

[@ericcrichardson]

My Dad built an Altair 8800 when I was something like 8 or 9 years old. He still has it, a large reason why I ended up going into Computer Science (and working at the same large software company you did Dave)

[@billj5645]

So much fun! I remember when the Altair came out and I wanted one but I wanted it to program on so I could play with software, not play with hardware. I realized it wouldn't do what I wanted to do so I waited and eventually got a Commodore 64 but I couldn't do what I really had dreamed of until I bought my first IBM PC shortly after they came out.

[@michaeldaniels3639]

The first computer I ever touched was a co-worker's Altair 8800. I wasn't very impressed until he got BASIC running and a game called Lunar Lander. He kept it at work and was generous enough to allow others to mess with it and I was able to write a program in BASIC to calculate resister values for audio attenuator pads. That's when it became practical to me.

[@customsongmaker]

You didn't have a pair of attenuator resistance calipers?

[@scowell]

Would like to have seen the Altair running the sieve in assembler. You haven't lived until you've entered the front panel switch bootstrap into a Data General Nova to read the TTY paper tape!

[@nightpups5835]

This was the most informative video on the altair 8800, all my previous impressions of the machine was it was a cool toy that changed what blinky lights blinked depending on what toggles are on. this shows it's a real computer if a smidge slower than threadripper

[@rudolfglaser9664]

In free fall, all computers should be equally fast - except Macbooks, which are more aerodynamic from case ;)

[@Birdman_in_CLE]

Is the Air version more aerodynamic than the Pro? My thought is yes. The air has no cooling vents which could cause turbulence

[@derkeksinator17]

Oh boy, I love switches. Especially the really satisfying ones. I used to have a tank fire button as on/off switch.

[@Hot.sausee]

Fun and funny video. A little over my head but I had fun learning and growing my appreciation for modern computing. I’m a 90s baby so the Altairs era is pretty crazy for me. Shoulders of giants.

[@hedlund]

You, sir, have spectacular taste in TV. Futurama remains one of the very best things I've ever seen on a screen, and for so many reasons it's nearly impossible - for me, anyway - to quantify for someone who hasn't already seen it. Speaking of quantifying: I knew the TR would post some rather juicy times and counts, but those deltas really were a smidge jaw dropping.

[@FalcoGeorge]

Wow.. great to see this. The 8800 was my first intro into computers at school also with Microsoft Basic. Thanks for the memories.

[@waynec369]

Dave, back then the OTP ROM part numbers were 23xx. The erasable versions were 27xx. Same applies to CMOS variatants. A 2716 (27C16) should work if the same speed or faster. The number after the hypen in the part number gives you the speed, i.e. 2716-450. I could hook you up with some used M2716F1 (access time of 350 nS) made by ST Micro if I knew how to reach you. The P8316E has an access time of 450 nS, so these should work just fine.

[@LordOrwell]

I love Dave's sense of humor. I remember one of his earlier videos had some barely audible noise in the background. It turned out it was Dave talking and telling funny stuff.

[@germancaperarojas4023]

Gr8, gr8, gr8 video! Excellent content. Never heard the true early beginnings of Allen and Gates adventure. You should do another video depicting how the Altair was developed and then evolved. Even why Ed Roberts became a physician. Keep the good work ❤

[@freeedom22]

The comparisons we need. Was just about to buy one of them and wasn't sure, thanks so much this helps a lot.

[@quantumjank3091]

Your dry wit at the end on the Altair having > switches than Ryzen was God tier Dad humour Dave! Great way to cover some PC History and interesting stats on how far we've come. P.S Had an IBM PC Junior the upgraded/expensive version with 2 x Floppy drives and a Dot Matrix printer when I was about 5 years old (and we got it second hand) would love to see you cover the power of having two floppy drives and a dot matrix printer plus the games that were around then in the very early DOS days (if you haven't already).

[@oldman4863]

that was more fun, than it should of been: as an almost 70 yr. old technophile I really appreciate "those that have gone before" to get us to where we are today!

[@ernstoud]

Would be interesting to compare energy consumption between the two, and memory consumption. Efficiency is more than just being faster…

[@doublej42]

A single led uses 1 watt of power and I bet these are not even LED multiply that by the factor of the loss and enough altairs to beat a 4 year old cpu would knock out many power grids. Good question though. FYI my similar rig uses around 600 watts when pushed to its limits including monitors.

[@Steamrick]

@@doublej42 Those dim LEDs will use a fraction or a watt each... the primary power hog on the Altair is gonna be that old CRT display.

[@factzilla1868]

Watts per MIPS of CPUs has improved ~500K fold since 1974. If you could manufacture an Intel 8080 (6µm) on TSMC's 7nm process and ran it at the same voltage and frequency it would be on the order of 1000 times more efficient in MOSFET power dissipation alone.

[@virtualtools_3021]

​@@factzilla1868and you could probably fit several million in the space of one modern cpu or GPU die

[@eDoc2020]

@@Steamrick I don't know the specs offhand and am too lazy to measure it but the entire VT220 is probably under 40 watts. With tons of old-tech chips the Altair probably isn't much less.

[@joe08867]

Seeing how far we have come is quite shocking. Great video

[@kelli217]

There was an old 8086 assembler that was mnemonic-compatible with the 8080. I think Intel wrote it, intended as a way to facilitate migration from the 8080 to the 8086. And, of course, the Ryzen is still directly compatible with the 8086's instruction set. So, in theory, you could assemble the original MS BASIC on the Ryzen. There might have to be some modifications in order to get terminal output. Why do I bring this up? Well, because doing so would be the most direct comparison, without the overhead of emulating another processor, but also without the optimizations of modern compilers and fancy-schmancy additions to the instruction set. And it probably won't run on more than one core at a time. Just raw speed, with no other technological advantages.

[@celstark]

Your deadpan is so spot on! Love it!

[@brucewilliams6292]

It would be fun to see the Altair running machine code prime sieve. Thanks for the fun video.

[@john_critchley]

I wrote one for my Z80-based TRS-80 Model I but this was 40 years ago I can't put my finger on it right now.

[@chrismcdonnell7448]

Dave, this was an awesome comparison and I applaud you for doing this test. Your dry humor is refreshing and I really enjoy your videos. Thank you for everything you do.

[@_Jayonics]

"Mom, can I have a computer?" "We have a computer at home..." *Computer at home*

[@pseudocoder78]

I love how the humor in this video is a subtle dig on youtube review channels. I feel like I'm watching a Project Farm episode in bizzaro universe. Nicely done.

[@AmirHusainTX]

Loved this episode. Thanks! Clock speed difference is 2000X between the Threadripper and the 8080. I would guess that the Altair would be anywhere between 100X and 1000X faster if the routine was written in Assembly. To be generous, let's say 1000X; which would mean the Threadripper is 2B/1000 = 2M times faster. Given that the clock speed delta alone is 2000X, divide 2M by 2000 and you get 1000X faster performance for the Threadripper, negating the effect of clock speed. What you're left with - 1000X - is a pretty impressive difference attributable to processor architecture (sans clockspeed.) We have indeed come far!

[@vyor8837]

Ehh, it's more like 5x speedup at best for assembly. Most of the speedup there is just from faster memory access. Amusingly, memory access is actually the thing holding back the threadripper too; with infinite bandwidth and 0 latency you'd probably see a 3x speedup for it(and like a 20% speedup for the Altair)

[@vyor8837]

Though, notably, the thread ripper also has... A lot more cores, a more fair comparison would be limiting it to 1 core, though note this wouldn't scale linearly at all in spite of the performance drop(that pesky memory bandwidth again).

[@1967CougarXR7]

When I saw the title I knew I had to watch. I've been testing my vintage systems against each other by running programs to figure the fibonacci sequence.

[@cromulence]

LOL I love the classic Simpsons and Family Guy references. Wonder how fast the 8800 could do it in machine code?

[@smrp1984]

This was beautiful!!! Thank you as always... I don't always say thank you but always think thank you.

[@volvo09]

Very nice Altair! It's in wonderful condition. (And the other machines you panned over look nice too!) I now know what the switches do,this was a great video.

[@patsh1]

May I recommend his video "Bare Metal Programming - Booting From the Switches"? There he explains them in even more detail.

[@volvo09]

@@patsh1 I'll check that out now. Thanks!

[@kmath50]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I worked at a place that made card readers. We had a S100 interface for the reader, with software written in MS-Basic. We later added support for the Apple II, Commodore PET, TRS-80, and the for IBM PC.

[@TomCee53]

I’d like to see you write the sieve in machine code and toggle it in directly. I’m sure the thread-ripper would still win by a wide margin, but it would be interesting.

[@Ruslan-S]

Agree. 30,000 times difference actually didn't seem as large as the 2 (20?) billion times difference. Maybe with native code on Altair this is going to be even more impressive. And then we could also compare with just one core of the threadripper ))

[@DavesGarage]

I'll do it in ASM as soon as I can load stuff onto the Altair again! Been fighting with a hardware issue... but plan to!

[@JeffNipp]

Perfection. This is absolutely perfectly in the tradition of the Altair and community

[@dougmanatt4317]

One important metric that is only too rarely examined is performance and/or price per volume. i.e. benchmark passes/cuft or $/cuft. The strange thing about this metric is that although passes/cuft does seem to increase over with increasing system release date, the $/cuft remains somewhat constant! I would be interested in you posting a $/cuft (American units, €/cc would also be fine) values for the Altair and the Threadripper. Thanks for these informative studies. They are useful and very career enhancing!

[@sfperalta]

What you fail to mention is that the Altair has 1 kajillion times more nostalgia! Seriously, I had an Altair 8800 poster in my room as a teen, but could only dream of owning one. I mean, who could afford the $3000 bucks back in the 70's?? (I think that's like a million bucks today LOL!) Thanks for the video, it was fun to see an 8800 running anything. After all, in computer years, that's pretty old! And RGB fans... who needs them?! Give me more switches!! Next video, maybe compare the Threadripper against a Babbage Difference Engine, you know, to give the TR a chance to really shine.

[@Billwzw]

Would love to see the test series extended backwards in time, to include Cray, DEC, IBM, etc. It gives a more relatable sense of how much computers have changed, so that society can create cat videos from a text prompt. :-)

[@alexisfibonacci]

And where will we get those machines?

[@larslindgren3846]

Don't forget to include an analytic engine

[@nikkic9305]

Most of the IBM 'big iron' machines also known as mainframes back in the day, were not known for their number crunching computational speeds and quite frankly their benchmark numbers in those type of tasks would be disappointing. Where these machines shine is in scalability, large-scale transaction processing and the huge amounts of bulk data they could process. Now a Cray is a supercomputer and used in the field of computational science which encompasses a wide range of computationally intensive tasks across many fields. So, it's sort of an apples and oranges comparison, the mainframe vs supercomputer match. But yeah. How would the modern HW owned by Dave compare to a Cray-1 circa 1975 capable of 160 MFLOPS,, or a Cray-2 circa 1985 capable of 1.9 GFLOPS? There's probably someone somewhere that has this vintage HW. Don't know. I don't know how many FLOPS Dave's machine can flip so have no idea how they would compare. BTW, the original Cray-1 weighed about 10,500 lbs and consumed about 115 kW of power, but adding more Freon cooling and storage capacity would have likely doubled that power figure! So even if you had this HW in your garage, you'd likely have no way to easily power it!

[@ernestoditerribile]

The Crays are awesome. Haven’t worked on any of them for more then 20 years now. All companies have dumped them.

[@TonyHoyle]

I suspect the cray 1 - the machine we always used as a benchmark of 'stupidly fast' in the 80s, would have trouble competing with a raspberry pi these days. OTOH the raspberry pi doesn't come with inbuilt seating, so the cray still wins. Edit: I went down the rabbit hole of asking how fast the WOPR was, and the answer turns out to be either (a) stupidly slow because it took 72 seconds to work out tic tac toe, or (b) stupidly fast because it ran a full AI in 1980. The boring answer is 'as fast as the plot needed'.

[@DiddyHop]

Thank you for helping me decide what my next computer should be! Those switches are mighty inviting

[@martp]

Great video, I also have the 3970X and have wondered how much faster it is compared to these older classic computers. Just an idea for a future video; it would be an interesting topic to compare the 3970X against previous world's fastest super computers, a room full of computers in 1990 might still be slower than a 3970X perhaps.

[@DavesGarage]

Check out my Mainframe VS PC, I do that based on MIPS ratings!

[@GraveUypo]

iirc even 1998's deep blue was surpassed back when the first hexacores came out or something. i remember my 2500k being faster at stockfish than deep blue. i think

[@johnsch8634]

I feel like this was some very good product purchasing advice and I will certainly take this new information into account later when I am at my local computer purchasing station and presented with this very real dilemma.

[@jackcoats4146]

Thanks for the stroll down memory lane. My Altair was sn 529 if I remember right. I did lot's of learning with it. Also built SWTP TV Typewriter II And HrathKit dot matrix printer eventually. With a DCHayes 300baud dial up modem and AI Cybernetics speech synthesiser, 2 8inch single density floppy drives, and a Processor Technology 3P+S and eventually a 1k ROM with a Intellec comparable bios, life was good. I ran it till about 1985 when it came down to it ot staying married. 😢😮 I wisely chose my wife.

[@vladsnape6408]

First time watching this channel, and just started watching the video. I'm rooting for the Altair 8800. Hope it wins.

[@Kaos116]

I love these types of videos. We know the outcome, but not by how much. Keep up the entertaining and informative videos!

[@mordantly]

8000 bits on one chip.. Must have been a $200 or more per chip then. Now we have $30 512GB chips 1/4 the size. Or RAM in the 4GB+ per chip at 1/3 thickness of these once-large units.

[@tyson31415]

I saw the title, said out loud "but why?" and now I'm subscribed... my first was a VIC-20.

[@jk180]

I'd love to see how fast a binary version would run on the Altair. Thanks Dave!

[@BigPete7407]

Loved your tongue in cheek approach, classic!

[@katrinabryce]

I think the most fair comparison would be to run it in whichever version of Basic comes with Visual Studio Community Edition, or Powershell.

[@Conservator.]

Hey Katrina! Good to see you here too!

[@kazeshinu]

Thanks for the comparisson. I was unsure which I should buy. Thanks for making my choice easier

[@amcluesent]

That was hilarious. I'd have liked to see both machines tested using code written in assembler :)

[@BrightBlueJim]

Agreed. Removing the interpr

[@BrightBlueJim]

Removing the interpretation layer from the 8080 and the emulation and interpretation layers from the Ryzen would c

[@BrightBlueJim]

Damnit, you get my point, though

[@lucasrem]

C000, I called it a pointer,I used terminal with many preprogrammed options. My fathers company, dairy lab, used it to send data, and do calculations, when it was over completed, we got it at home. The basic rom chips, the CPU board, as a kid I never was any interested in what was inside the blue boxes, we owned the modem too. Thanks for showing it after all these years, coder in Amsterdam, asperger, used your windows tools, great to see who made them.

[@jamesross3939]

Thoroughly enjoyed that... I was 12 y/o in 1975, almost 60 now, but look at the progress in that amount of time.

[@foogod4237]

It would be interesting to write a native assembly version of the sieve for the Altair and see how fast you could actually get it to run on that hardware...

[@DavesGarage]

Working on it! Just had trouble getting the Intel HEX Loader to work on my Altair, but am trying...

[@Slop_Dogg]

@@DavesGarageawesome!

[@jorgejaime4325]

First time that I've have seen this early PC assembled, explained and actually working!

[@larsulrich2761]

It would be interesting to see what the time would be if Dave got a CPM C compiler like BDS C for the Altair and ran the prime sieve with that.

[@SteveJones172pilot]

Even better... straight assembly..

[@larsulrich2761]

Hand assembled code on the Altair vs. GW BASIC on an emulator with the Thread Ripper. That should even the playing field a bit.

[@giedmich]

14:17 music stars playing and robotic voice singing: This was a triumph! I'm making a note here Huge success! ...

[@denys7796]

The Altair is a fascinating piece of tech because of it’s place in history. I love the part when you explained the startup sequence. You should do a full video about how a hobbyist in 1975 would get this machine running and for what purpose.

[@jeffreyjoshuarollin9554]

Great idea.

[@DavesGarage]

Once I get the drives working, I will! Or I plan to anyway!

[@Immorpher]

Glad you were able to probe that backside! Without it, this wouldn't have been possible!

[@bytehead904]

I was expecting 8080 ASM versus 80386 ASM actually. But yeah.

[@AnthonyRBlacker]

Nice job restoring that beautiful Altair 8800!! Edit: Nice B-Roll Dave.. really great showing the CPU daughterboard.. really nice having that ORIGINAL Intel 8080 chip, that's probably just as valuable as an Altair with a repop chip in it!!

[@danijelujcic8644]

It would be fascinating to see CPUs like 286, 586 and Athlon 64 added to this test :-)

[@lucasrem]

It’s only about the Alltair, some modern PC next to it, only to show what it was. The terminal interface is essential !

[@carltone]

Thanks for this trip down memory lane. Enjoyed the tear down of the Altair. I had access to a Motorola 6800 d2 kit before purchasing a Radio Shack TRS80 as my first computer.

[@galesteven]

Great fun! I noticed that the BASIC version doesn’t store the sieve as bits and do bit manipulation. PEEK and POKE my friend 😂. BTW, I’m enjoying reading your book!

[@ChrisWalshZX]

I thought that but then it's actually quicker to store each element in a byte rather than a bit.

[@wayneyadams]

There are several shortcuts to finding prime numbers which I regularly use to calculate prime number in my head. 1) Only odd numbers need be considered since 2 is the only even prime number. 2) Multiples of 5 can be eliminated. 3) You need only consider factors up to the square root of your highest number. For 1 to 100, for instance that would be 10. So, for prime numbers from 1 to 100, you need only concern yourself with multiples of 3 and 7. Multiples of 3 are easily eliminated. In your program, if you start at 3, you can iterate by 2 instead of 1 so you need only check 3, 5, 7, ....

[@grahamheath3799]

Amusing and thought provoking. I remember my second machine, home made using a similar backplane. Have you looked at the 2732 eeprom as a substitute for your mask programmed ROMs? Certainly worked with 2716 and the ROMs from the Superboard machine. I remember the days when 64K machine ran supervisory control on a complete Chemical plant.

[@surferdudemi]

The total address space of the 8080 is only 65K, so if you use a 2732, you would have to remove 16K of SRAM. IIRC bank-switching was implemented long after this, so you can't use that to expand the memory space.

[@grahamheath3799]

@@surferdudemi ooops looked at the device type number and jumped in with both feet.

[@surferdudemi]

@@grahamheath3799 I was always a Z80 guy anyway, LoL. When the 8086 came out, the 27256 was da b*mb

[@BrianG61UK]

I think the TMS2516 EPROM is pin compatible with the P8316E.

[@surferdudemi]

@@BrianG61UK If anyone wants to use these, check the timing specs as well. They sometimes differ, even if the pinout is the same

[@gotbordercollies]

You are one smart (and very funny) guy Dave. Thank you for your presentations, I always look forward to your next video. Till next time...

[@dougfraser77]

Could we program a prime sieve on the Apollo Guidance Computer and prove once and for all how powerful was the computer that landed men on the moon?

[@DavesGarage]

I will ask Marc!

[@stevesether]

I don't see why not. The AGC has 11 instructions, with all basic arithmetic, plus a bitwise and. There's a project called virtualAGC that can emulate the machine. Seem like the AGC has close to 4k of RAM. Written in ASM, the AGC might be a fair fight with the Altair running basic code at 20 times the clock rate of the AGC

[@casperghst42]

One of the best tubes I've seen in a very long time.

[@davidjohnston4240]

Where I work, we West all the chips.

[@franklincerpico7702]

🤣

[@comictrio]

I west chips in Ranch and sometimes in Nacho Cheese :)

[@franklincerpico7702]

Looks like Dave finally caught it.

[@davidjohnston4240]

@@comictrio People coming later to this thread may be confused.

[@comictrio]

Yeah, he did...:)@@franklincerpico7702

[@solidstate0]

That was great to see, and yes - although the Altair will obviously be slowest, somehow my heart wanted it to win.

[@AlexValliMusic]

Love that humor at the end that was great!😂 what I love about Dave’s videos is how his humor comes off tonally

[@bassbacke]

The (P) 8316E is at first glance pin compatible with the 2716 EPROM. All address and data lines are on the same pins, so is VSS and VCC. You'll need a EPROM programmer capable of supplying a programming voltage of 25V so some new programmers will not work.

[@utubekade]

love how serious he is the whole video about the drag race :D

[@CromemcoZ2]

I have an Altair 8800 sitting in a closet, but haven't gotten motivated to try to get it running again yet. Mine came from a university soil lab, where it worked as a data logger with a custom wirewrapped I/O card connecting it to several HP lab instruments. I would have preferred seeing an 8080 assembler version vs. the modern machine's optimized C++. But I know that would have been considerably more work. :)

[@delgardner1753]

I found today’s video to be both entertaining and informative. Thank you!

[@TheBluemanBenny]

Oh man, that was way too funny! Had me laughing all the way through! Thanks for that! I always enjoy your videos. Keep up the great work.