Altair 8800 reproduction

Tom Hunter ccth6600 at gmail.com
Tue Jul 28 08:07:33 CDT 2020


I am not the most patient person.  :-)
While waiting for my Altair-Duino to arrive in the mail I discovered a cool
JavaScript based implementation.
It allows me to start playing with the Altair 8800 front panel and exercise
the "machine". It does a fairly decent job.

https://s2js.com/altair/

Cheers
Tom Hunter

On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 2:11 PM Tom Hunter <ccth6600 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I thought about it long and hard. A fully configured Altair 8800c would be
> at least $1200 plus shipping to Australia from all the different component
> suppliers at least another $600. I would end up with a "real" system but
> some parts wouldn't quite be real. For example the floppy drives are
> emulated via a USB cable and a server running on a PC. It would be possible
> to add real 8" or 5 1/4" drives plus power supplies plus cases and cabling
> at great additional cost. At the end it would still be some hybrid system
> with some modern bits substituting the original components. I would have a
> nice S-100 bus system but it wouldn't be an authentic Altair 8800a. So I
> decided to go down the fully emulated path and looked at Mike Douglas's
> Altair 8800 clone and the Altair-Duino.
>
> I ended up buying the Altair-Duino a very promising Arduino Due (ARM)
> based clone similar to Mike Douglas's clone but without the nice metal case.
> This Altair-Duino kit is affordable, is open source and has a powerful
> hardware platform.  Now that I am retired I am time rich and money poor.
> :-)
>
> The "Standard" kit is $149.95:
>
> https://www.adwaterandstir.com/product/altair-8800-emulator-kit/
>
> Strangely the website says there is no stock available from the guy
> himself, but Tindie has 4 in stock:
>
>
> https://www.tindie.com/products/kb0wwp/altair-duino-standard/?pt=ac_prod_search
>
> I can't wait for it to arrive. It is a long way from Minnesota to Western
> Australia. Covid-19 doesn't speed it up either.    :-(
>
> Cheers
> Tom Hunter
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 1:12 AM Tapley, Mark B. via cctalk <
> cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>> On Jul 23, 2020, at 10:15 PM, Tom Hunter via cctalk <
>> cctalk at classiccmp.org<mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>> wrote:
>>
>> The easiest and more affordable path would be the Altair
>> 8800 clone but somehow I am more attracted to the non-emulated
>> implementation.
>>
>> Understood space, time, and money are always factors, but I’m curious
>> whether that’s an XOR function or a simple OR (which would be satisfied
>> with both)? Having played in software on “modern” hardware might be pretty
>> useful when it’s time to start bringing up the reproduction hardware.
>>
>


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