Altairduino - the old Altair 8800 emulated

Any stories, collections or recollections of the earliest days of computers
or related projects
jmendoza
Posts: 167
Joined: 18 Feb 2018, 23:07

Re: Whoops! bought more obsolete carp...

Post by jmendoza »

Hi Phil,
in 1974-5 I had a subscription to Popular Electronics and they did a series of construction articles on the Altair 8K. The centerfold of the magazine was the full size artwork for the Altair's main PC board. You could also order the board and a kit of components. It was curious to look at and contemplate, but since it only had switches and LED lights, it was of little practical use or significance to me at the time as it was expensive, and not really of any use to me as far as radio control went. By the time I finished my tour of duty in the US Army, small counter-top computers were available and obsoleted the Altair. I remember using the TRS-80 (trash-80 as we called it) and the Commodore PET before getting my 1st IBM AT and later an, an XT.

My Uncle Bob worked for IBM and was on the IBM PC development team, so we got one of the 1st ATs, long before they were released to the public. 64K of memory was a BIG thing back then. We got an AST research "Turbo" board for the AT to speed it up.
bluejets
Posts: 316
Joined: 19 Jun 2019, 04:09

Re: Whoops! bought more obsolete carp...

Post by bluejets »

Found a Dick Smith 8K VZ200 in the back of the kid's cupboard the other day.
Has the tape recorder for data and what I think is a 16k expansion module ( about the size of today's 3.5" hdd)
Couple of extra wires coming out where one of the kids modified it slightly to go to 4 micro switches and a lever ( diy game controller) :D
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