# altair-basic-source-code

**Repository Path**: deepseek-r1/altair-basic-source-code

## Basic Information

- **Project Name**: altair-basic-source-code
- **Description**: No description available
- **Primary Language**: Assembly
- **License**: Not specified
- **Default Branch**: main
- **Homepage**: None
- **GVP Project**: No

## Statistics

- **Stars**: 0
- **Forks**: 0
- **Created**: 2025-09-08
- **Last Updated**: 2025-09-08

## Categories & Tags

**Categories**: Uncategorized

**Tags**: None

## README

# source code for the Altair BASIC interpreter, from Microsoft

## about
[Bill Gates blogged about the 50th anniversary of Microsoft's first product](https://www.gatesnotes.com/meet-bill/source-code/reader/microsoft-original-source-code), an interpreter for the Altair of the BASIC language, and it included a link to a scanned PDF of a printout of the source code.
It's a hefty PDF in a couple of ways - it's over 150 pages, 100 megabytes, and likely 132 columns wide.

I figured I'd attempt some OCR and provide a mirror.

## what's here
[In Releases, there's a copy of the PDF with some OCR and jbig2 lossless compression.](https://github.com/pronoiac/altair-basic-source-code/releases/tag/v0.0.1)
It's a bit smaller - 84 MB, compared to the original's 95 MB.

In the [`ocr/` folder](ocr/), there's the text as recognized by OCR.
It won't be incredibly legible, but it's under 1 MB, so this will be more accessible by those with slow or limited bandwidth.

## disclaimer
This is the property of Microsoft.
It was published without a license.

Keep circulating the tapes!