Roberts called his computer the Altair 8800 and offered it as a kit. It got a good press splash, featured on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine in January of 1975. The day the magazine came ...

If you aren’t old enough to remember when computers had front panels, as [Patrick Jackson] found out after he built a replica Altair 8800 ... at the bus in a real computer.

So it’s hardly a surprise that in 1977, seeing the success of early home computers like the Altair 8800 and IMSAI 8080, Heathkit decided to join the fray with a computer kit of their own.