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_se…
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.