The History of Microsoft: 1975, BASIC, and Altair

Posted by | 02/06/2009 | 4 Comments

Channel 9 is beginning a new series, going back in time and taking a look at the history of Microsoft. The first episode goes all the way back to 1975 and takes a look at BASIC, and the inside story of Bill Gates and Paul Allen getting it to run on an Altair.


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Category: Software

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As the Founding Editor for GottaBeMobile.com, Rob oversaw the growth and overall direction for content, advertising, and management of the site. Keep up with Rob at RobBushway.com Send email to Rob
  • http://www.gadgetspot.org Gavin Miller

    We’ve come a long way haven’t we? What was your first computer Rob?

  • http://www.gottabemobile.com Rob Bushway

    it was a radioshack 286

  • GoodThings2Life

    386DX-40 with math coprocessor, 4MB of RAM, and a whopping 120MB hard drive, 1X CD-ROM drive, and Sound Blaster card… crashed Windows 3.0 the first night I had it playing around with video drivers and spent the evening figuring out how to fix it from the command-line setup… since then my repair times for nearly all issues is more like Domino’s Pizza… fixed in 30 minutes or less, lol.

  • http://Bizdigi.Blogspot.com David Howard

    Thanks for sharing this! I read a book by Stephen Manes years ago on Microsoft that had a lot of the same info, but it was cool to actually see and hear all of this. As I recall from the book, Paul Allen was alarmed suddenly while on the plane that they had no way to load the program, that is when he wrote the bootstrap loader. I wonder if they will discuss how Allen and Gates used to use the computers at Harvard with emulation software to write for other platforms.

    My first PC was a Commodore Vic 20 around 1981, maybe 82. My first Microsoft DOS based PC was a Tandy 1000.

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