They're not equivalent, though they share the same
pinout and
 function with the old National Semiconductor 8097.  The 8T97
 has greater current source/sink capability, hence it is faster
 in some applications and can drive a pretty stubstantial load.
 It was very common as a bus driver, which was it's intended
 purpose.  For normal TTL fanout, either part will work. 
Well, an 8T97 was specified for U24 on the CP-A.  U24 had been
socketed and replaced with a 74367.  I "undid" the mods around
U24/U25 and populated U24 with an 8T97.  A bunch of work, no
change in behavior.  Arg!
I also looked at the MPU-A.  Sure enough, on the 16 pin header
to the front panel, pins 1-8 are connected to pins D0-D7 on
the 8080, in order (pin1-D0, pin2-D1, etc).  They also go a
bunch of other places I have not tried to figure out yet.  It's
probably just going to the data lines on the S-100 connector.
Given the C3 instruction, I don't see why everything goes so
wacky when I reverse the header.
I've looked through the docs I got with it and don't have
anything on the MPU-A.