You've also got the issue of date codes on IC's to deal with. And not many 40-pin DIPs are still made the same way as original 8080A's, i.e. white ceramic with a gold cap.

Huh? The Apple II is *not* an upgraded Apple I, which seems to be what you're thinking. The video electronics in the Apple I is radically different and not easily emulated by anything that doesn't use the same design (i.e. dynamic shift registers.) The memory maps are completely different, etc., ...

But you can't just run an Apple I emulator on the Apple II. The memory maps are completely different and the video chain of the Apple I is radically different than any home micro designed since the late 70's (i.e. it is *not* a memory-mapped video system; it's closer to a dumb terminal bolted onto a 6502. Well, a really dumb dumb terminal :-) )

Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 08:28:45 -0800 (PST) From: Tim Shoppa <shoppa(a)alph02.triumf.ca> To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers" <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Subject: Re: Photo of Smithsonian microcomputer exhibit

You've also got the issue of date codes on IC's to deal with. And not many 40-pin DIPs are still made the same way as original 8080A's, i.e. white ceramic with a gold cap.

Not a chance. While the actual electronics "silicon" inside an Altair is worth less than $50 today, the sheet metal and the power supply transformer would cost you a couple hundred dollars to duplicate. (While the total cost would be about the same, the distribution of the costs is almost exactly reveresed from 20 years ago.) For those who really want a S-100 front panel machine, maybe they'd be willing to pay for me to make duplicates of my TIMSAI. Features:

You've also got the issue of date codes on IC's to deal with. And not many 40-pin DIPs are still made the same way as original 8080A's, i.e. white ceramic with a gold cap. Not a chance. While the actual electronics "silicon" inside an Altair is worth less than $50 today, the sheet metal and the power supply transformer would cost you a couple hundred dollars to duplicate. (While the total cost would be about the same, the distribution of the costs is almost exactly reveresed from 20 years ago.) For those who really want a S-100 front panel machine, maybe they'd be willing to pay for me to make duplicates of my TIMSAI. Features: 1. Front panel design modeled after the IMSAI. (Hey - the plexiglass/ photomask/white mask/colored plexiglass sandwich is the the *only* sensible design I've ever seen!) 2. Blue (silicon carbide) LED's instead of red LED's on the front. (Heck, as long as I was investing many long hours and many $ into doing the sheet metal work, why not pay for something *new* on the front.) 3. Blue and red C&K paddle switches, like the original, but with two extra mode switches to allow you to get at the 24-bit-wide IEEE-696 address bus and the 16-bit wide data bus. 4. Takes all standard IEEE-696/S-100 cards, of course, but my preferred configuration has a 20 MHz Z180 with 2 Megs of fast SRAM, a four-disk floppy controller, and a SCSI interface all on a single board. Automatic wait states are inserted for all "off-board" transfers, of course. Tim.

A diecast car replica 80% of original size? That's a lot bigger than the ones I used to play with as a kid! And isn't the lack of a motor a dead give-away that it isn't the original? [ :=) for the humor-impaired ] Tim.

>Thinking out loud: >I wonder what the market would be for an Apple I replica?

Scott Walde wrote: Yeah, but!!! Can you picture the problems trying to document the lineage of a 'genuine' Altair, IMSAI, or Apple.