Altair 8800 reproduction

[Tom Hunter]

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_search

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.
>