Podcast Episode 2: Altair 8800 and Kaypro

Listen along as David Greelish and Jeff Salzman discuss the history of the Altair 8800 and Kaypro computer. Well… at least listen to David’s clear, quality audio, along with Jeff’s misconfigured source microphone that sounds like he’s talking from a mile away! 🙂

The Altair 8800 is a Tier One computer presented as the first “commercially available home computer.” As such, it was chosen to be the first computer we talk about on this podcast.

The Kaypro was chosen due to a recent and unfortunate event. Its founder, Andrew Kay, had passed away. The computer he created is an early Tier Two computer, representing a line of portable computing devices.

You can find out more about these machines on the History of Personal Computing online museum. Click on the appropriate links:


Links mentioned in the show include:

eBay links (you may need to scroll down the linked pages to see the full auction)

  • Jeff’s Picks
  • David’s Picks

Send feedback to feedback@HistoryOfPersonalComputing.com – We really want to hear from you by email or send an audio comment! Also, as we cover these computers, we would love to receive your high-quality pictures of the machines we’ve covered, so please start sending them in.

Also, please write a review on iTunes!

You can download the episode directly by using this link: http://www.historyofpersonalcomputing.com/podcast/HofPC2.mp3

or, you can subscribe to our podcast feed at: http://podcast.historyofpersonalcomputing.com/rss.xml

2 Comments on Podcast Episode 2: Altair 8800 and Kaypro

  1. MarkO
    October, 13th 2014 at 9:53 pm

    I own neither an Altair or a Kaypro, but did get to try out the Kaypro II, the Kaypro IV and the Kaypro 10, at a local Computer Land, about 1984 or 1985.
    I bought my First Apple ][e in NOV-1983, and was looking at other microcomputers available at the time, just to understand how they worked. I thought the Kaypro 10 was the most interesting, in that it contained a 10 MB Hard Disk, which to my mind, was way cool, compaired to lots of Floppies. It also had a Hard Drive Parking Command, IIRC, it was LOCK, which moved the Heads to a “safe location” and Locked them with a CLUNK, and a corresponding UNLOCK Command.

    MarkO

  2. Jeff
    October, 24th 2014 at 9:25 am

    I didn’t realize that Computerland was selling Kaypro at that time. I would have visited their store more often had I known. I thought by the time the mid-80’s rolled around, they were continuing to focus solely as an Apple and PC retailer.

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