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  #1  
Old 11-29-2006, 11:23 PM
sje sje is offline
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Default Some thoughts for logjam

Some thoughts for logjam

First, let me congratulate you on what appears to be a well thought-out start in the hobbyist kit business.

Oh, I found out about your project at: http://boingboing.net

I built an IMSAI 8080 back in 1976 when I was a teenager; it was a valuable learning experience and the unit worked for many years. I had hoped to get a modern IMSAI replacement, but it doesn't look like there's been much progress in that direction for the past couple of years. So I find myself looking at your efforts with significant interest.

I hope that you don't have any intellectual property issues from Ed Roberts or anyone else connected with MITS/Pertec. As long as the project is clearly marked as a replica, I guess there shouldn't be a problem.

Those of us who were active in the early days of S-100 machines recall that not all boards available back then worked well, or even worked at all. I thinking of the MITS 8 KB dynamic memory boards; these do not need to be resurrected, at least not without needed improvements.

Having used all of the early Altair models, the best one in my recollection was the 8800B that had the paddle switches instead of thin toggles. It also had a "slow" single step mode along with much better graphics on the front panel. If you were doing one of these, I'd likely be writing a check today.

The kit price seems a bit up there, but not overly so. Certainly it's better to have a deliverable kit at a high price than a less expensive model that never sees the marketplace.
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Old 12-01-2006, 10:41 PM
Grant Stockly Grant Stockly is offline
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Thanks! The price will be dropping a little after December when the second run comes in.

I have considered doing a version of the 8800B, but I don't have one to use right now.

Howard Harte and I will be working to get a eZ80 based 50MHz Altair in the next few months. Hopefully that will be available soon. You would be able to run CP/M software at lightening speed and be able to use the Altair case as a ATX PC case.
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  #3  
Old 12-02-2006, 04:07 PM
sje sje is offline
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The Altair 8800B had a variant, the 8800BT that was a turn key version with only a power and reset switch on the front panel. I doubt if there will be much demand for that.

As for running 8080 software at 50 MHz, I've already beaten that with my z80 graphical interface, full front panel emulation. It's written in Objective-C and runs at about 270 MHz on my 2.33 GHz Mac Pro. It has all the front panel I/O as any other real or emulated 8080/z80 machine along with a host of other features: single step and slow step, step by instruction and step by bus cycle, 7 segment readouts for all of the z80 registers, and full display update in real time. It also can run multiple instances of an emulation simultaneously. The program can save and load full memory images to save on toggling time.

What it doesn't have yet is a way to connect emulated peripherals. Eventually I'll get this working.
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