While surfing the net, I stumbled across the site of the Vacuum Tube Supercomputer Centre. It's amazing what can be accomplished with thermionic emission....
880
Steve
alltare
Apr 18, 2006 1:35 am
I'm testing Yahoo's rich text (beta) message editor, and I thought take the opportunity to show you some of my techno wall hangings. Sorry for the poor picture...
881
Dave Freeman
dcfree2000
Apr 18, 2006 6:20 pm
Steve, Nice concept- I hope you don't mind as I put your photo on my blog!! http://pccollecting.blogspot.com/ Dave...
882
Steve
alltare
Apr 18, 2006 6:47 pm
Dave- Sure, you're welcome to use the image. Thanks for letting me know the image came through OK. There are a few details that Yahoo fails to mention to...
883
Steve
alltare
Apr 26, 2006 6:25 am
Some interesting history of the HP35 calculator that you may not have seen before: http://users.easystreet.com/writer/Minck%27s_HP_35_story.html This has...
884
alltare
May 5, 2006 7:55 pm
Some Yahoo groups are currently exhibiting message posting problems. Messages submittied via email seem to be getting posted OK, but if you try to compose and...
885
billdeg
May 10, 2006 2:38 am
Hi - I was wondering if anyone in this group had an idea of how many more or less *working* Altair computers there are in the world today. Perhaps this is an...
886
Erik Klein
ErikSKlein
May 10, 2006 2:47 am
I've got a working 8800 with a floppy (works most of the time) and a working 8800BT with a couple of floppies. I have another 8800 in near-working condition...
887
Steve
alltare
May 10, 2006 4:46 am
Yahoo has fixed the message posting glitches, so forget what I said in my previous message. Steve...
888
Steve
alltare
May 10, 2006 5:34 am
I have 5 working Altairs (that is, if I took them out of storage they SHOULD work). 8800 8800b 8800bT Attache 680b and several others that could be made to...
889
Craig Landrum
craig_o
May 10, 2006 12:45 pm
... I have a working 8800 original with two add-on 8 inch diskette drives and the original two-board diskette controller, two serial boards, either of which I...
890
Andrew Kessel
akessel
May 11, 2006 10:20 pm
Yet another - voice. 8800 8800b 8800bt ... -- Andrew Kessel...
891
billdeg@...
billdeg
May 11, 2006 11:25 pm
Thanks for the responses. What I was really asking however is "..does anyone know how many *working* Altairs there are total, worldwide? 200? 1000? I ...
892
Erik Klein
ErikSKlein
May 11, 2006 11:42 pm
I think we all realized what you were asking but decided to answer the easier question that you didn't ask. . . ;) If I had to guess, and it would only be a...
893
Dave Sroelov
dsroelov
May 12, 2006 1:47 pm
well, as long as everyone is chiming in... i have an 8800B that was working the last time i fired it up. 56K RAM, 8K PROM board, two original hard-sectored 8"...
894
Craig Landrum
craig_o
May 12, 2006 5:05 pm
... That number may actually be high if you count only the ones that boot from floppies. Hard to tell for sure, but from the lack of them on eBay (except for...
895
Steve
alltare
May 12, 2006 5:51 pm
Dave- It's great that you still have the Altair that you built. That's a keeper. I built an 8800b from a kit, and I still have it too. I now wonder how I...
896
Steve
alltare
May 13, 2006 7:52 pm
by Dave Bursky (1980). I don't know how this one slipped past me, but I hadn't heard of the book until recently, on another forum. It usually goes for $40 or ...
897
Dave Sroelov
dsroelov
May 14, 2006 12:08 am
steve, i think the biggest niggly little gremlin i had was the original clock circuitry. when the first load came out of the factory, the clock circuit was...
898
Steve
alltare
May 14, 2006 4:47 am
Those early Altairs had all kinds of timing problems. Thankfully, the model B referenced everthing to the system clock and most of those bugs disappeared....
899
Dave Sroelov
dsroelov
May 14, 2006 12:19 pm
it's the right company, but the wrong box. it looks like an early model compared to the one i've got sitting here. one of these days i'll dig the box out and...
900
Allison Parent
ajparent1
May 14, 2006 4:52 pm
... Not on a bet, only some of the worst bugs. I have one of the earliest ones. Powersupply was too weak to support 16k of S4K ram and IO, CPU clock plain...
901
Steve
alltare
May 15, 2006 3:42 am
Allison Parent- I have had much better luck with the 8800 than you had. I still own an original 8800 that I bought at a MITS surplus sale whien they were ...
902
Craig Landrum
craig_o
May 15, 2006 3:42 pm
I have an original 8800 also that I built up from parts assembled in 2004-2005. The biggest problem I have is the unreliability of the diskette board pair. ...
903
Andrew Kessel
akessel
May 15, 2006 3:53 pm
Could you guys remind me. What was the difference between the 8800 (which I have) and the 8800a? thanks...
904
H_E_Robert
ueoguy
May 15, 2006 4:26 pm
Craig, I can't recall ever having a temperature reactive "cap" issue, they tend to either work, or not. But the clock circuits and timing issues can certainly...
905
H_E_Robert
ueoguy
May 15, 2006 4:35 pm
Andrew, The 8800a had the 8800 front panel with 8800b components like flat handled swithces, one piece motherboard, and "b" power supply. Just Bob!...
906
Craig Landrum
craig_o
May 15, 2006 4:37 pm
... Thanks, Bob! All good suggestions. I should have done these tests already, but haven't. I've also been bitten years ago by chips with a heat problem....
907
Steve
alltare
May 15, 2006 5:52 pm
Andy- The 8800 had 4-slot mother boards, and you could daisy chain 4 of them to give you a total of 16 slots (16 S-100 sockets). The 8800A had a single...
908
Allison Parent
ajparent1
May 17, 2006 12:23 am
inline comments... ... Mine was ordered December of 1974, when Poptronics het the box I was there. It was very low (xxx200) serial number. Nearly all the...
