Hi all,
I think I may be the latest new person to undertake building the 8800c. If you want to know a little bit about me and my early exposure with microprocessors, read Wayne P’s first post in his 8800c build thread — describes me perfectly.
So I discovered this group, the idea of the 8800c, and the boards people have made available to make this happen, and got excited and quickly started ordering things in hopes that I wasn’t too late. I’d hate to have found out some critical components were no longer available. But that wasn’t the case and things started arriving quickly.
The first item to arrive was the clone case. Now this is the part of this post I’ve been dying to get to, since even before having access to this forum. This case — wow. Absolutely fabulous. The case is beautifully done, immaculately detailed, and is just perfect in my eyes. It’s absolutely stunningly beautiful. Those of you who don’t have one yet, I have to tell you: the case is so beautifully finished, it’s incredible. I have been taking such ultra good care of it since receiving it so as not to mar it in any way. I’d like to get the computer finished and the case still look this nice — that is my goal. Currently, there is not one single mark on it.
And the FDC+ card also came. This I had to show my kids. “Children, do you know that this is? It is a PRINTED USER’S MANUAL, complete with schematics and parts list.” This is the way it used to be back in the seventies and early eighties! It’s great! And then all the advanced features this card comes with which you can choose to use or not .. I love it.
I also ordered the suggested 9 slot backplane. This arrived beautifully wrapped and in excellent condition. And it is SO thick and heavy, really what you want and expect for something you are going to be plugging boards in and out of! And the mounting holes line up perfectly with the predrilled holes in the case.
Also I bought the 2SIO card. I haven’t unwrapped this one yet but it looks to be in fine physical condition and the builder provided it with exactly my options I requested. He was helpful and supportive and very easy to talk to. Everyone was.
Everyone has been so nice and helpful already, just in acquiring parts. Thank you to all of you who provided these parts to me.
I’m looking forward to getting my machine up and running. The CPU board and backplane are completed, and I’m now working on the display board pair. I’ll post pics later.
Regards,
Sirius