Hello fellow Altair enthusiasts. Theo here from Australia. A little background story on me. I own an original Altair 8800 rev 0 that I purchased back in 2011 from a guy in Canada. The machine worked well from the front panel, and it came with quite a collection of S100 boards, but it didn't come with a serial board. So, I couldn't use the machine for anything useful. It took a couple of years to get a working serial board. Eventually I managed to get an SSMIO4 and also a MITS 882SIO. Both boards took a little work to get operational, but I'm happy to say both still work well. I also own two of the newer boards, Mike's FDC+ and Martin Eberhard's 882SIOJP. My FDC+ is currently hooked up to a TEAC 55GFR which works great.
I haven't done much with my Altair in years, but recently my enthusiasm was revived due to Mike's Altair 8800C Youtube video. Mike has helped me a lot over the years, especially with getting the SSMIO4 working. And his websites and Youtube channel are fantastic sources of information on the Altair. In particular, I was very excited about creating a new CPU board for the Altair. So, I've recently purchased the CPU board PCB by Gary Kaufman and the parts kit available on ebay through tpkirkp.
My plan is to first build the CPU and test it in my original Altair. Then move onto getting the S100 backplane and power supplies. And eventually onto the front panel kit and case. I'd love to have an Altair built out of new parts that I can use to diagnose some of the non-working S100 boards that I have.
So this weekend I'm assembling the CPU board. I'll add updates to this thread as I go. And I'm no electronics engineer either, just an overly enthusiastic amateur who's half decent at soldering.
Here are some pics of my CPU kit and my original Altair.