Altairduino - the old Altair 8800 emulated
Posted: 29 May 2019, 23:09
For me the nostalgia thing isnt just about model flying, I like old motorbikes and I fondly recall the earliest microprocessor days of the mid 70s when if you wanted a computer, you had to build one and program it in machine code with LEDs and binary switches. I still have my own-design SC/MP microcomputer which runs KITBUG and NIBL (National Industrial Basic Language) in its 4k ROM and 1k RAM. Over here in Blighty we were at a disadvantage until we were rescued by the likes of Nascom, Bywood, Newbear, and later Sir Clive, plus many more tiny man-in-a-shed kit producers. In America, the kit to have was the Altair 8800 but it was so ridiculously expensive that only universities, businesses and very well healed individuals could afford one. I scrapped my own much, much modified Nascom-1 some 20 years ago and have regretted it ever since - it literally went in the local dumpit site skip. I originally built the Nascom from a prototype kit for Lynx and its no exageration to say I owe my career to that board
Anywho, cut a long story short, I've ordered a kit for the Altairduino which is a 100% cycle-emulation of the old Altair 8800, capable of running CP/M and hence a myriad of crappy software obsolescence, with a proper printed panel which faithfully recreates the look of the old rig. I'm so looking forward to assembling it and playing the original, text-only Star Trek game!
I'm going to call the Altair "Ralf"
In the mid 80s Whiz Kids was my fave programme on TV
Back in the 70s I joined the recently formed 'Amateur Computer Club' where everything was homebrewed, this was long before BBCs and such, & later found the "ACC North-West" through the newsletter and used to drive over the Pennines every month to meetings held at Manchester Uni. After a year or so about 10 of us founded the ACC-Sheffield, but by then the commercial stuff was starting to push out homebrewing. I think the local group only survived a further year, then the ACC itself completely faded away from existence.
We started a homebrew computer group within BT and did very well for a few meetings, most were homebrew but one lad had a kit-built Sinclair Mk14 (which is why I built my SC/MP) but it too petered out. Things changed so quickly and electronics was expensive. I'd been running a dialup mailbox/BBS on the expanded Nascom-1 for some time by then.
At work we found some scrapped ticket machines that had a Motorola 6800 inside, I pulled the processor boards, wrote a monitor for it (a minimal operating system) and made a few development boards for the club, still have a couple here. It had a heady 1k of RAM, a hex display and hex keyboard.
Back then a monitor program was known as a 'bug' - eg Kitbug (National Semis), Nasbug (Nascom), Mikbug (Motorla), Humbug (SWTPC) etc.
By this time I'd assembled (from boards, rather than built from scratch) a CP/M machine with 180k diskettes (!) and I joined the CP/M user group which was mostly a library and disk-format-conversion service, I made a few contributions , custom BIOS stuff, bios extensions, and BBS s/w and a few Ham programs like RTTY, Morse trx, Mailbox, AX25 etc.
The CP/M User Group survived for a couple of years after the IBM PC arrived then that too folded - all the work was done by Derek Fordred and his wife, I think people took advantage of his good nature.
I still have my CP/M box (its huge) but I've no idea if it still works.
I like the idea of an accurate software emulation of the old gear, on a familiar, modern processor... its kinda like what we're doing with R/C
Cheers
Phil
Anywho, cut a long story short, I've ordered a kit for the Altairduino which is a 100% cycle-emulation of the old Altair 8800, capable of running CP/M and hence a myriad of crappy software obsolescence, with a proper printed panel which faithfully recreates the look of the old rig. I'm so looking forward to assembling it and playing the original, text-only Star Trek game!
I'm going to call the Altair "Ralf"
In the mid 80s Whiz Kids was my fave programme on TV
Back in the 70s I joined the recently formed 'Amateur Computer Club' where everything was homebrewed, this was long before BBCs and such, & later found the "ACC North-West" through the newsletter and used to drive over the Pennines every month to meetings held at Manchester Uni. After a year or so about 10 of us founded the ACC-Sheffield, but by then the commercial stuff was starting to push out homebrewing. I think the local group only survived a further year, then the ACC itself completely faded away from existence.
We started a homebrew computer group within BT and did very well for a few meetings, most were homebrew but one lad had a kit-built Sinclair Mk14 (which is why I built my SC/MP) but it too petered out. Things changed so quickly and electronics was expensive. I'd been running a dialup mailbox/BBS on the expanded Nascom-1 for some time by then.
At work we found some scrapped ticket machines that had a Motorola 6800 inside, I pulled the processor boards, wrote a monitor for it (a minimal operating system) and made a few development boards for the club, still have a couple here. It had a heady 1k of RAM, a hex display and hex keyboard.
Back then a monitor program was known as a 'bug' - eg Kitbug (National Semis), Nasbug (Nascom), Mikbug (Motorla), Humbug (SWTPC) etc.
By this time I'd assembled (from boards, rather than built from scratch) a CP/M machine with 180k diskettes (!) and I joined the CP/M user group which was mostly a library and disk-format-conversion service, I made a few contributions , custom BIOS stuff, bios extensions, and BBS s/w and a few Ham programs like RTTY, Morse trx, Mailbox, AX25 etc.
The CP/M User Group survived for a couple of years after the IBM PC arrived then that too folded - all the work was done by Derek Fordred and his wife, I think people took advantage of his good nature.
I still have my CP/M box (its huge) but I've no idea if it still works.
I like the idea of an accurate software emulation of the old gear, on a familiar, modern processor... its kinda like what we're doing with R/C
Cheers
Phil