<b) The Intellec MCS8i panel can access not only the 64K address space of
<the 8080 but also the 256 I/O ports. If you flip the right switch you can
<use the top 8 switches to select a port and output data to it using the
<bottom 8 switches. All this is done in hardware (the frontpanel simulates
<an 8080 I/O cycle) without the use of the 8080.
It was a neat hack too!
Allison
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Well, the Altair I'm thinking of buying is a turnkey w/o disks, and the
owner is too far away to enable a casual visit of this box, so I need to
do some remote diagnostics.
Here are some questions for you Altair owner/experts:
1) Was the 8800b turnkey even made by MITS, or was the lack of front panel
due to the acquisition by "serious" Pertec?
2) The turnkey model apparently has a PROM. What's in it? If there's a
monitor, how do I talk to it (baud rate, commands, that kind of thing)?
3) Assuming there's a monitor, can anybody give me a short program to
enter (by proxy) that will flash an LED or output to a terminal?
4) This thing also has a couple of Tarbell boards, one says MDL
1011D. Disk controllers?
Thanks,
Doug