MITS Advert - December 1976
From Popular Electronics
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"MITS Altair 680 - The Small Wonder of the Micro-World"
This advert for the Altair 680 from MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) appeared in Popular Electronics at the end of 1976, about a year after this computer was first announced back in November 1975[1].
The 680 was a small programmable computer, and was one of the first three based on the Motorola 6800 CPU. It followed on from the Altair 8800 of January 1975 - a machine based on Intel's 8080 CPU, and the machine which launched Microsoft.
It retailed for a not-unreasonable $625 plus tax - about £4,240 in 2024 money, although a version with extra memory and a copy of "680 BASIC" was just over double that at around £8,840 in 2024.
MOS Technology's 6501 - the fore-runner to the 6502 - was pitched as a cheaper, drop-in replacement for the 6800. Even though it had the same pin-out, it was not a copy (its internals were completely different), however its external similarities gave Motorola's lawyers something to chew on for ages.
Luckily for MOS (and ultimately Commodore and large chunks of the 1980s microcomputer industry), the settlement with Motorola involved them dropping the 6501, but keeping the 6502.
Date created: 01 July 2012
Sources
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