Just a question and comment

[zeke1312]

I'm a C128 and A1200 user but haven't posted here for some time. I'm planning to get into the Altair 8800 world and wanted to know if anyone is or has "dabbled" in the Altair world?

[RobertB]

     Heh, I've only seen (but never touched) Altairs when I've been to the Vintage Computer Festival in California.

          Truly,
          Robert Bernardo
          Fresno Commodore User Group
          http://videocam.net.au/fcug
          July 24-25 Commodore Vegas Expo - http://www.commodore.ca/forum
          and click on ComVEX

[zeke1312]

Vince Briel is completing his Altair Micro 8800 kit which he plans to have available mid June. It looks like there is a pent up demand for this as many have been ordered according to Vince. There was a full scale copy of the machine available as a kit some time ago but that source has dried up. Anyhow that kit and any Altair 8800 available on ebay go for over $2k. In part what has "tweeked" my interest is this new kit will be about $200.00 dollars, not $2k. There is a web site brielcomputers.com that explains the whole thing. No, I'm not soliciting for Briel or have any financial interest on it, just passing the info along. I've ordered a kit and I'll see what goes on. Years ago when the Altair 8800 first came out I would have loved to purchase one but had no $. I like playing with new toys!

[RobertB]

Vince Briel is completing his Altair Micro 8800 kit...

Ah, I've been considering his KIM-1 replica (micro-KIM) ever since I saw it a few years ago at Vintage Computer Festival East.

             Truly,
             Robert Bernardo
             Fresno Commodore User Group
             http://videocam.net.au/fcug
             July 24-25 Commodore Vegas Expo 2010 - http://www.commodore.ca/forum
             and click on ComVEX

[quarkx]

in sad Altair news, I just found out that Ed Roberts past away last month..he was only 68. I was shocked that this was not all over the news sites, but then again, it's only us computer geeks that realy know who Ed was, and how important his role is/ was in computer history.

[airship]

I've still got the original two issues of Popular Electronics that introduced the Altair.

[zeke1312]

Yes, I should have mentioned that Ed Roberts had just passed away. Some nice comments from Bill Gates regarding Ed's influence in the PC world. I should mention Vine Briel has included in his Altair 8800, VGA and NTSC video, PS/2 keyboard and a SD card interface. I believe it will have 32k of memory.

[commodorejohn]

Ooh, sweet news about the kits. In the meantime, if you want to sate your retro-lust, the SIMH emulator package includes emulators for both 8080 and Z80-based Altair setups and some software packages to go with them. Being written by Linux types nobody's bothered implementing any graphics boards ;P Still, since most stuff from that time was character-based anyway, no big loss. I'd also recommend getting a simple ANSI terminal program if you're running on Windows so control codes will work properly; SIMH can redirect to a Telnet port for this purpose.