Load Altair Disk Basic

Chris DavisFun Things To Do

Another product of Micro-Soft.

Requirements:
MicroSD Card with Altair disk images (available here.)
Terminal software (Putty is highly recommended.)

Step-by-Step:

  1. Stop whatever the Altair is doing – raise “Stop”, then raise “Reset”.
  2. Mount emulated disk 3 in drive 0 – switch 12 up, switch 1 up, switch 0 up (all other switches down).
  3. AUX2 down to load disk.
    Terminal will say “[mounted disk ‘DISK03.DSK: ALTAIR Disk Basic’ in drive 0]”
  4. Mount emulated disk 4 in drive 1 – switch 12 up, switch 8 up, switch 2 up (all other switches down.)
  5. AUX2 down to load disk.
    Terminal will say “[mounted disk ‘DISK04.DSK: ALTAIR Disk Basic programs’ in drive 1]”
  6. To run bootable disk – switch 3 up (all others down).
  7. AUX1 down. This will install the Disk Boot ROM and boot disk 0.
    Terminal will load Altair Disk BASIC and ask “MEMORY SIZE?”
  8. Press Enter.
  9. For “LINEPRINTER?” respond “O” (for Okidata.)
  10. Answer 1 for “HIGHEST DISK NUMBER?” (That means two disks.)
  11. For “DISK FILES?” and “RANDOM FILES?” you can answer 4.
  12. The terminal will show
    40870 BYTES FREE
    OK

A few commands:

“MOUNT” – will mount both disk drives. You can also enter “MOUNT 0” and “MOUNT 1”.
“UNMOUNT” and “REMOUNT” – in case you change disks.
“FILES” will show a directory of the current drive. You can also enter “FILES 0” and “FILES 1”.
LOAD “FILENAME” will load a program. To load from drive 1, enter LOAD “FILENAME”,1.

If you would like more information about Altair BASIC, you can download the the original manual.