Hello

General discussions related to the Altair 8800 Clone

Hello

Postby DrLogistik » February 24th, 2024, 10:57 pm

So I wanted to just say hello.
I am unfortunately a day late and a buck short to this community. I have always wanted to have a kit of the Altair 8800 (ever since High School, circa 2007) . I am sad to see that they are no longer being offered after I finally finding this site.

If any of you fine folk ever want to sell or git rid of one of your Altair clones, Please let me know :) I will be happy to take it off your hands so that I can finally play with one.

Take care.
_Dustin
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Re: Hello

Postby Wayne Parham » February 25th, 2024, 11:07 am

I believe you can still buy an Altair 8800c from Mike at Deramp.com:

This model has an actual 8080 CPU board, a backplane and peripheral cards. So it's probably what you were hoping to buy anyway.

Mike also sold a system that emulated an Altair 8800 - and it was really cool too - but it had a more modern processor and used flash memory to simulate having floppy drives. It was a great system that duplicated the "look and feel" of an Altair, but the 8800c is much more like having an Altair from the 1970s.

About the only difference is the power supplies are switchers instead of using rectified transformers and the memory boards generally use higher density memory chips. But you can use the older RAM boards from the 1970s if you want. Same processor, same backplane.
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Re: Hello

Postby Twayne5 » February 25th, 2024, 11:18 am

Hi, I have one of Mike's Altair clones with tape option that I would sell. $525 shipped within the US.
Travis
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Re: Hello

Postby toml_12953 » February 25th, 2024, 10:08 pm

Wayne Parham wrote:I believe you can still buy an Altair 8800c from Mike at Deramp.com:

This model has an actual 8080 CPU board, a backplane and peripheral cards. So it's probably what you were hoping to buy anyway.

Mike also sold a system that emulated an Altair 8800 - and it was really cool too - but it had a more modern processor and used flash memory to simulate having floppy drives. It was a great system that duplicated the "look and feel" of an Altair, but the 8800c is much more like having an Altair from the 1970s.

About the only difference is the power supplies are switchers instead of using rectified transformers and the memory boards generally use higher density memory chips. But you can use the older RAM boards from the 1970s if you want. Same processor, same backplane.


The RS-232 cards are no longer available as an assembled unit and the cases may be gone by now or will be soon. If you want an Altair 8800c, you'd better move fast!
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Re: Hello

Postby BillO » February 27th, 2024, 10:58 pm

I would strongly recommend contacting Mike and starting a project to build a 8800c. Truly a rewarding experience and as close as you can come to having a real 8800 without spending $5000 for a non-functioning relic.

If you want something cheap and simple, there is this: https://adwaterandstir.com/product/altair-8800-emulator-kit/

But it's not the same.
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