29 Aug
2014
29 Aug
'14
3:55 a.m.
On 08/28/2014 07:41 PM, drlegendre . wrote:
Both the D/C panel and 8080 CPU board were in bags.
The panel wiring
harness had been _de-soldered_ from _some_ mainboard, but not from the
_present_ mainboard - the present mainboard had the panel wiring _cut_ away
from it. I do know for a fact that the D/C panel & CPU board are original
to the machine, so it may be that the mainboard was cut-out from a second
Altair machine and transplanted into mine. As received, the mainboard had
1/4" cut stubs of white wire protruding from all of the hookup holes.
Oh geez, I'd almost forgotten about that crappy white wire packed with
the kit. Truth be told, making all those wire connections took a fair
amount of the overall assembly time. I was cursing the geniuses that
designed the thing for not putting in IDC ribbon connectors. I believe
that IMSAI got that part right.
The other thing--if you've got the 4K DRAM boards, do yourself a favor
and get rid of them. They never did work right--especially when trying
to retain their contents when the reset switch was toggled. I later
replaced them with SSM 8K SRAM boards--you know, the kind with a forest
of 91L02/21l02 1Kx1 DRAMs--64 of the things.
--Chuck