25 replies to this topic

[Sonny Black]

Jan. 1 1975 The Day The World Changed



The Altair 8800 of Ed Roberts

In contrast with the first microprocessor based personal computer—Micral, the MITS Altair 8800 was extremely successful market product. The designer—Ed Roberts intended to sell only a few hundred to hobbyists, but he was surprised when he sold thousands in the first month.

The microcomputer was sold by mail order through advertisements in Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics and other hobbyist magazines. Both kits and fully assembled machines were available. Today the Altair 8800 is widely recognized as the first spark, that led to the microcomputer revolution of the next few years, because 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 Micro-Soft's founding product—Altair BASIC.

In 1969 an engineer, working at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico—Henry Edward Roberts (born 1942), together with 3 other colleagues decided to use his electronics background to produce small kits for model rocket hobbyists. Therefore they founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in Roberts' garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and started selling radio transmitters and instruments for model rockets. Rocket kits didn't achieve a market success, this later on MITS switched to calculator kits, which appeared to be more successful venture.

(Snip)


And The Rest as they say is History

[Threat Doc]

Funny. What about BattleTech? Do you have a BattleTech-based unit history to share, stories or time-line entries from the current MWO time-line, or to parallel the Blood of Kerensky trilogy?

[Lily from animove]

hussein wasn't found and slain, he was executed after a porcess.

[Threat Doc]

15 January 3050 - Phelan Kell meets, for the first time, both Precentor Martial Anastasius Focht and Khan of the Wolves Ulric Kerensky, finding out he is the Bondsman of the latter.

[Threat Doc]

(NOTE: Until PGI turns back and produces a game again worthy of the name BattleTech, this will be my last entry in this thread.)

30 March 3050 - Shin Yodama encounters Clan Smoke Jaguar's Elementals and OmniMechs on Turtle Bay, barely escaping with his life, and learning how hard it will be to take down the Clan's special infantry battlesuits.

[Threat Doc]

It's been a little while since I posted one of these...

19 June 3051 - Phelan Wolf is used, as a witness, to explore whether Khan Ulric was responsible for the death of ilKhan Leo Showers, who died on the bridge of the Dire Wolf, or not. Phelan helps exonerate the Khan and, after he leaves, Ulric is voted into the position of ilKhan by better than half of the Khan's present. Finally, rather than choosing Loremaster Conal Ward as the Khan to replace him, he instead selects Natasha "The Black Widow" Kerensky, who has been in the Successor States for the past forty-seven years and not tested out with the Clans as a MechWarrior in all of that time, as the Khan to replace him.