20 May
2000
20 May
'00
7:59 a.m.
At 07:29 AM 5/19/00 -0600, Richard wrote:
I'm not sure the Beehive terminal is the
best-supported one available, but
if you've any hope of getting your Altair running with "period" hardware,
i.e. with hardware available in the era in which the box was designed, I'd
say you're going to need one.
I already have a ADM-3A that works fine, so I don't need this one. I
find Lear-Siegler terminals all the time.
Video boards for the S-100 were not common
until much later, with the possible exception of the
SSM VB1, which does not
provide a standard 80x24 display.
If this terminal is really unused, it might be worth going through and
swapping the electrolytic caps with some relatively new ones, but it
probably would work well otherwise. 20-year old electrolytics need to be
"re-formed" if they're to work reliably. That involves removing them from
the circuit and gradually cycling them up to peak voltage and current. If
you have to remove them, it makes more sense to replace them rather than to
go through the re-forming process. Some of them may die anyway, due to
tired dielectric.
I have a large Variac that I plug old stuff like this into and I use it
to gradually bring up to full voltage. I start at 10% for a few minnutes,
then go to 20% for 1/2 or so and then step it up another 20% every 1/2
hour. I've had no trouble with shorted caps since I started doing this.
A TVI 910 or a Lear-Siegler ADM-3A might be a more widely supported choice.
I used either a TVI or a Hazeltine Esprit emulating a Hazeltine 1500 most of
the time. I didn't start using this S-100 stuff until 1977, however.
I'd like to find a Hazeltine 1500 for one of the Altairs but the only
ones that I've found so far were in pretty bad shape.
Joe