From: adc2@my-deja.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Altair 8800B Date: Sat, 04 Sep 1999 03:05:37 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. Lines: 31 Message-ID: <7qq29s$fvj$1@nnrp1.deja.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.255.166.225 X-Article-Creation-Date: Fri Sep 03 00:46:59 1999 GMT X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.05 [en] (Win95; I) X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x33.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 208.255.166.225 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!nntp2.deja.com!nnrp1.deja.com!not-for-mail A friend is moving her business. She had an old computer. It is a Altair MITS 8800B with a double 8 inch 300/25 disk drive. There is a Zenith monitor/keyboard that is hooked up to the unit plus a printer cable. The reason the computer is still around is it and the drives were built into a large worktable which was used for other purposes. The unit is very heavy! The seperate power supply itself probably weighs 50 lbs. Apparently the computer was in use until about 1988, but there doesn't seem to be any disks around. However there is a large procedure manual for running the inventory aplication. Looking at eBay I see that there is a good market for computers similar to this but I'm not sure if this one might be a little newer than the ones I saw on eBay. Anybody know much about these old Altairs and who might be interested in them. Does anyone Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Share what you know. Learn what you don't. ###### Message-ID: <37D095C2.C8BA2237@iedu.org> From: Morris Dovey Organization: iedu.org / iedu.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en,fr,pt,ru,es MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Altair 8800B References: <7qq29s$fvj$1@nnrp1.deja.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 18 Date: Fri, 03 Sep 1999 22:45:06 -0500 NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.108.37.10 X-Trace: news.uswest.net 936416829 207.108.37.10 (Fri, 03 Sep 1999 22:47:09 CDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 03 Sep 1999 22:47:09 CDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news-out.uswest.net!news.uswest.net!not-for-mail adc2@my-deja.com wrote: > Anybody know much about these old Altairs and who > might be interested in them. The Altair was one of the first build-it-yourself "personal computers" and I'd suggest that you not toss it in the dumpster. If you don't want to keep it, you should be able to sell it on e-bay for enough to make the trouble worthwhile. I went with the IMSAI 8080 (because I liked the front panel better) but gave serious consideration to the MITS machine. Morris Dovey West Des Moines, Iowa USA mrdovey@iedu.org ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Altair 8800B References: <7qq29s$fvj$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <37D095C2.C8BA2237@iedu.org> From: merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) Message-ID: Organization: Stonehenge Consulting Services; Portland, Oregon, USA Lines: 21 X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.6.44/Emacs 20.3 Date: 05 Sep 1999 12:11:53 -0700 NNTP-Posting-Host: 192.108.254.12 X-Complaints-To: news@teleport.com X-Trace: news1.teleport.com 936558714 192.108.254.12 (Sun, 05 Sep 1999 12:11:54 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 05 Sep 1999 12:11:54 PDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!nntp.teleport.com!news1.teleport.com!not-for-mail >>>>> "Morris" == Morris Dovey writes: Morris> adc2@my-deja.com wrote: >> Anybody know much about these old Altairs and who >> might be interested in them. Morris> I went with the IMSAI 8080 (because I liked the front panel better) but Morris> gave serious consideration to the MITS machine. Oooh yes. The IMSAI had a *very* sexy front panel compared to anything else at the time. Dark red and blue toggle long-paddle switches with a real man feel, not those teeny little switches from the Altair. I still remember some of the boot sequence. :) the IMSAI was of course immortalized in the movie War Games. -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training! ###### From: Brian Inglis Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Altair 8800B Date: Tue, 07 Sep 1999 20:44:24 -0600 Organization: Systematic Software Reply-To: Brian.dot.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca Message-ID: References: <7qq29s$fvj$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <37D095C2.C8BA2237@iedu.org> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.6/32.525 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.148.130.131 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.148.130.131 X-Trace: 7 Sep 1999 20:44:25 -0700, 207.148.130.131 Lines: 31 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.50.1.43 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!newsfeed.direct.ca!nntp.cadvision.com!news.cadvision.com!207.148.130.131 On 05 Sep 1999 12:11:53 -0700, merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) wrote: >>>>>> "Morris" == Morris Dovey writes: > >Morris> adc2@my-deja.com wrote: >>> Anybody know much about these old Altairs and who >>> might be interested in them. > >Morris> I went with the IMSAI 8080 (because I liked the front panel better) but >Morris> gave serious consideration to the MITS machine. > >Oooh yes. The IMSAI had a *very* sexy front panel compared to >anything else at the time. Dark red and blue toggle long-paddle >switches with a real man feel, not those teeny little switches from >the Altair. I still remember some of the boot sequence. :) > >the IMSAI was of course immortalized in the movie War Games. Those of us with DEC PDP-11s used to sneer at the long paddle toggles on the DG Nova front panel. The 11 front panel had nice large (1cm x 3-4cm) triangular plastic toggles with a feel similar to a good keyboard. You could toggle in an octal digit with each hand, loading about a word (16 bits) a second. We used to have bootstrap toggle races, but never actually timed the contests to find out the toggle rate. Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada -- Brian_Inglis@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca) use address above to reply ###### From: "Carl R. Friend" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Altair 8800B Date: Thu, 09 Sep 1999 21:22:02 -0400 Organization: as little as possible! Lines: 38 Message-ID: <37D85D3A.874850ED@prescienttech.com> References: <7qq29s$fvj$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <37D095C2.C8BA2237@iedu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: tpkP0FrIWUORThMxrDVA4kTTHvy398iYLizzXVPMIvA= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 10 Sep 1999 01:22:05 GMT X-Accept-Language: en X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.0.29 i586) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!howland.erols.net!outgoing.news.rcn.net.MISMATCH!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail Brian Inglis wrote: > > Those of us with DEC PDP-11s used to sneer at the long paddle > toggles on the DG Nova front panel. The 11 front panel had nice > large (1cm x 3-4cm) triangular plastic toggles with a feel > similar to a good keyboard. A lot of this depends on _which_ pdp11 and _which_ Nova you're speaking of. The first pdp11 (the 11/20, or on the very first ones, simply pdp11) had switches of the same design as the PDP-8/e -- little flat plastic bats, not the nice triangular ones that came in with the 11/45. The early Novas had bare metal toggle switches (which weren't too bad once one learned how to handle them); the Nova 3 has stubbly little paddles (the very long paddles belonged to the Eclipse). > You could toggle in an octal digit with each hand, loading about > a word (16 bits) a second. We used to have bootstrap toggle races, > but never actually timed the contests to find out the toggle rate. That's possible on any well designed front panel. Perhaps the very "best-of-the-best" for individual switches (we leave the hex dials of the IBMs out of this) went to DEC's KI-10 which used illuminated pushbuttons and had separate "clear" and "load" buttons which immediately zeroed the switches or loaded the switches with the contents of the display register. _Very_ nice! Working a KI-10's panel was like playing a piano. (The rocker-switch-based PDP-12 has a nice panel, too.) -- +------------------------------------------------+---------------------+ | Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | West Boylston | | Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA | | mailto:crfriend@ma.ultranet.com | | | http://www.ultranet.com/~crfriend/museum | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 | +------------------------------------------------+---------------------+ ###### From: J. Chris Hausler Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Altair 8800B Date: Sat, 11 Sep 99 14:11:22 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Lines: 27 Message-ID: References: <7qq29s$fvj$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <37D095C2.C8BA2237@iedu.org> <37D85D3A.874850ED@prescienttech.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 199.93.4.2 X-To: "Carl R. Friend" Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!news.belnet.be!carrier1.net!cam-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!news.delphi.com!news "Carl R. Friend" writes: > That's possible on any well designed front panel. Perhaps the >very "best-of-the-best" for individual switches (we leave the hex >dials of the IBMs out of this) went to DEC's KI-10 which used >illuminated pushbuttons and had separate "clear" and "load" buttons >which immediately zeroed the switches or loaded the switches with >the contents of the display register. _Very_ nice! Working a KI-10's >panel was like playing a piano. (The rocker-switch-based PDP-12 >has a nice panel, too.) UNIVAC machines like the 1108 and the strange Athena (a missle launch or tracking computer) had lighted push buttons. I also worked with a "process control" computer in the mid 70s with a mix of lighted push buttons and large toggle switches, a GE-PAC 4010 for which I have a front panel in my collection. As a heavy user of the NOVA/ECLIPSE line in the 70's, I liked the small toggles on the NOVAs and the large plastic handles on the ECLIPSE but the short plastic handles on the NOVA 3 were not as nice to use and I have front panels from all of these as well. I also have the front panel from an 11/70 which I used for about 10 years in the 80's and I always thought the very large plastic switch handles were harder to use. My favorite, however, was the GE-PAC as I was able to form my three center fingers into octal coded patterns easily and punch the push-button/lights very quickly :-) Chris