What were the capabilities of the Altair 8800?

[hurtstotalktoyou]

Hey, all.

I was curious to know if there was any practical purpose to early PCs like the Altair 8800--especially those without keyboards or monitors. Without a keyboard, you can't run a word processor--and it's fairly difficult without a display, too. I read that it shipped with BASIC, but how in the world could one program anything of value from a few switches and LEDs?

What other programs could early PCs run? All I'm aware of are word processors and spreadsheet applications.

Thanks in advance!

 

[PsYcHoCoW]

Switches and LEDs can represent binary, and binary is what makes opcodes/instructions and data which are part of a program...

 

[dwcal]

From the Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800

Programming the Altair was an extremely tedious process where one toggled the switches to positions corresponding to an 8080 opcode, then used a special switch to enter the code into the machine's memory, and then repeated this step until all the opcodes of a presumably complete and correct program was in place. When the machine first shipped the switches and lights were the only interface, and all one could do with the machine was make programs to make the lights blink. Nevertheless, many were sold in this form. Roberts was already hard at work on additional cards, including a paper tape reader for storage, additional RAM cards, and a RS-232 interface to connect to a proper terminal.