14 Jun
1997
14 Jun
'97
12:24 a.m.
In particular, none of the Altairs I saw people
building in the
mid-70's worked as designed; there were typos in the assembly instructions
and to get reliable front panel operation most people had to tweak
the one-shots that controlled the timing. Some of these
modifications are well documented by John Zarella, in his Byte
(1975:4 p78) article "Assembling an Altair 8800".
RE:8800 (A version)
BIG TIME! As someone that built one of the first it was a dog to get going
and I had scopes and all the goodies. I'd also worked with the 8008 before
and was Intelized as it were. A friend build one about 6 months later and
it was still flakey as hell. First of many mods was to get the damm oneshots
off the cpu card and put in a 8224 clock generator. I got mine to a stable
state but when the S4K memories came out I upgraded asap. Better but far
from great. To many oneshots. In late '78 I
transfered my IO, NS* MDS to a
new HORIZON box with a 4mhz z80. used the altair
for a few years to support
testing (front pannel). I put it in mothballs about 84 and will likely
never use it again. To highly modified to even consider museum piece and in
'79 it suffered a lightining hit and was never right since.
Allison
14 Jun
14 Jun
3:43 a.m.
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4:13 a.m.
At 07:43 AM 6/14/97 -0800, you wrote:
I agree with Tim here. Nearly all of the early Altairs in my collection
(8800, 8800a) have some mods in them (all published in the MITS newsletter
"Computer Notes" if I recall correctly), although I must admit I do not
remember anywhere the horrors in getting mine working as I see frequently
described around here. I've even got an unmodified CPU or two about, and
aside from having to wait a couple of seconds after power up for all to
stabilize and then hitting the reset switch a time or two to get the CPU
into a rational state, I generally don't have too many problems. (keep in
mind, I ran my BBS system on my early Altair for over 10 years! It can't
be *that* bad)
As to their 'condition' in a 'historical' view, I can still document
*all*
of the mods as being contemporary to the system so I do not see how they
could be viewed as lessening the systems value or historical significance.
You should see the number of factory mods on some of my PDP gear! (I can
document many of those too!)
Now, I will grant you that on occasion it is useful to return a system to
as close to an original condition as possible. In the case of the Altair
for instance, one of my units has the original 4 slot motherboard,
original power supply, and painfully little front panel switches. I also
keep an original CPU board and 256 byte memory board that can be installed
when I want it to be "original".
Curiously though, when I loaned one of my Altairs to Microsoft for a
preentation to the Smithsonian Museum, both parties were *much* less
interested in 'original condition' than they were in the designated topic
of the presentation. The Smithsonian staff had requested a demonstration
of an "original" Altair 8800 running the "original" Microsoft
product,
'BASIC'.
Obviously, there are some contradictions here! An "original" Altair could
not possibly run BASIC. That required a minimum of 4k of RAM, I/O, and a
device that could read paper tape. Hardly "original" in the view of some.
What I finally provided them after some discussion (and pointing out the
above), was my oldest Altair (with the 4 slot motherboard), with an
original CPU card, an IMS 16k memory card, MITS 2SIO serial board, and a
MITS Microsoft Extended BASIC ROM board. Not "original" in the narrow
view, but best suited for purposes of this demonstration, and pertectly in
line with what was available around that time, with the possible exception
of the ROM board. I did offer to provide them with a TTY and the paper
tape (which would have been more 'historically accurate'), but the 40
minute loading time seemed to disuade them rather quickly.
But I digress...
I've got various views on why "museums" want to treat their displays in
such manners, (having some experiance with the local ones) but I don't want
to start down that path... (today...)
-jim
---
jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
> > In particular, none of the Altairs I saw
people building in the
> > mid-70's worked as designed; there were typos in the assembly
instructions
> > and to get reliable front panel operation
most people had to tweak
> > the one-shots that controlled the timing. Some of these
> > modifications are well documented by John Zarella, in his Byte
> > (1975:4 p78) article "Assembling an Altair 8800".
>
> RE:8800 (A version)
>
> BIG TIME! As someone that built one of the first it was a dog to get going
> and I had scopes and all the goodies. I'd also worked with the 8008 before
> and was Intelized as it were. A friend build one about 6 months later and
> it was still flakey as hell. <snippage> I put it in mothballs about 84
and will likely
> never use it again. To highly modified to even
consider museum piece
and in
'79 it
suffered a lightining hit and was never right since.
I personally disagree with the "highly modified" == "not a museum
piece".
Museums which insist on having early computers be "as shipped from
the factory" (or, as was more often the case "as assembled using the
instructions") will be sorely disappointed in the event they expect
them to run when turned on.
As you point out, no real user of S-100 equipment ever bought an Altair
or IMSAI and then never opened it up to swap out the CPU, replace
the original memory card, or add I/O and a decent disk controller. The
S-100 world in the late 70's/early 80's was incredibly varied and
active; if a museum chooses to limit its collection to pristine machines
with only original cards, then they aren't truly representing how
leading-edge hobbyist, commercial, and industrial microcomputing was
done in that time era. 
9:18 a.m.
New subject: Free tape drives - the deal
Well, I have greatly underestimated the demand for 8mm SCSI tape drives.
I have been flooded with requests for the things (but oddly enough, not
much else) by quite a great number of people, including some that may not
be on the list ("hey, I heard your giving away tape drives! Can I have
one?"). I am only giving away three units (the rest, along with just
about everything else, is going to RCS/RI for trading stock) - a limitted
supply, but there were only about twenty of these routers in service across
the country.
So, in order to get these to the right people, I would like any
interested parties to tell me _why_ they want one of these drives. If it is
going to be used for a classic computer or old workstation - good. If the
owner respects the artifacts for what they were - better. In other words,
the three people that can come up with the most noble fates for the
critters will get them shipped to their door.
I still really do not know any of you people well, so there will be no
politics. I will announce the winners in a few days. Please send your
responses to me rather than the list.
The price? Still free for postage...
I should add that these drives _should_ work just fine. The routers were
pulled from everyday service not terribly long ago, and most have been
treated well.
And finally, a last minute addition - does anyone need a FDDI bypass?
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net
22 Jun
22 Jun
12:52 p.m.
On Sat, 14 Jun 1997, Tim Shoppa wrote:
I personally disagree with the "highly
modified" == "not a museum piece".
Museums which insist on having early computers be "as shipped from
the factory" (or, as was more often the case "as assembled using the
instructions") will be sorely disappointed in the event they expect
them to run when turned on.
After all, other museums don't insist that their dinosaurs be "as shipped
from the factory".
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
10045
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4 comments
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participants (5)
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allisonp＠world.std.com -
gram＠cnct.com -
jimw＠agora.rdrop.com -
shoppa＠alph02.triumf.ca -
william＠ans.net