Altair 8800 Clones are Shipping!

General discussions related to the Altair 8800 Clone

Re: Altair 8800 Clones are Shipping!

Postby smp » March 15th, 2014, 3:31 pm

Hello all,

I ordered my Altair Clone last Thursday night, 13 March 2014.

Mike and I have been conversing, and it appears that I got the very last one of the first batch!

Congratulations to Mike! This has to be a good feeling, to make such an investment in time and money to create such a product and then sell out the first batch. I sincerely wish you the best of luck as you move into the future with your product.

smp
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Re: Altair 8800 Clones are Shipping!

Postby AltairClone » March 16th, 2014, 7:58 am

Smp,

Thanks for the encouraging words -- it's been a great learning experience and great fun! The next batch is well underway despite my wife's initial resistance to the idea of doing this again :-)

Mike
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Re: Altair 8800 Clones are Shipping!

Postby jibanes » March 16th, 2014, 11:10 am

Great, I need a second one for my son, let me know when they're available Mike!
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Re: Altair 8800 Clones are Shipping!

Postby smp » March 23rd, 2014, 5:37 pm

Mike, you are the greatest!

I received my Altair Clone last Friday (Mar 21) safe & sound.

I got up and running quickly - your instructions are excellent. I was soon in CP/M and remembering that I've forgotten a lot about this old OS.

I gave Kermit a try, and got fouled up, as can be seen in my other posting in that thread. But PCGET works great and I managed to transfer some software into the Clone that I have been anxiously waiting to try. Wonderful!

Then came this morning, and when I started my machine, it would not boot CP/M, and the front panel lights seemed to be walking throughout all of memory. I took a look and my PROMs were gone, zeroed and disabled. As well, my floppy disks had reverted to "Scratch Disk."

Panic ensued pretty quickly.

While unconfidently poking around myself, I fired off an e-mail message to Mike. He answered very quickly, and gave me his phone number to call him directly. We spoke a few times, each time, Mike gave me more confidence that it was unlikely that I would severely damage the machine with what I was doing.

I managed to get Terra-Term working, in case Hyper-Terminal could have been part of the issue, and I got the Disk Boot Loader back in. Booting up into CP/M once again, I saw that my floppy disks were still there, it was just the descriptions that were changed. I got the other two PROMs back in and I've been running fine since.

I believe that I now know what my problem probably was - I believe I turned off power while I was in the Configuration Monitor. There is a warning in the manual that indicates that one should properly exit out of the Configuration Monitor and give control back to the Altair. Mike also told me that, if any changes are made while in the Configuration Monitor, they are made final when exiting back to the Altair. I will emphasize this: BEFORE TURNING OFF POWER TO THE MACHINE BE SURE TO EXIT TO THE ALTAIR. I believe that this error on my part probably caused the glitch I received. Today, I have power cycled many times, always having exited to the Altair, or directly powered down from CP/M, and I have not experienced any difficulty at all.

So, Mike, thank you very much for your superb direct on-the-phone support today. Thanks for bolstering my confidence and know-how. Thanks for creating such an excellent product.

Life is good.

smp
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Re: Altair 8800 Clones are Shipping!

Postby smp » April 11th, 2014, 8:19 am

AltairClone wrote:The next batch is well underway despite my wife's initial resistance to the idea of doing this again :-)


Hi Mike,

I see that the "out of stock" message has been removed from the Ordering page.
Does that mean the second batch of Altair Clones are ready to go?
If so, congratulations again on an excellent product, and the best of luck going forward.

smp
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Re: Altair 8800 Clones are Shipping!

Postby AltairClone » April 11th, 2014, 10:39 am

Yes, that's right -- as of April 10, 2014, Altair Clones are shipping again!

Thanks to all who joined me in their appreciation of this great period in computing history!

Mike
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Re: Altair 8800 Clones are Shipping!

Postby Tor » April 11th, 2014, 8:43 pm

Ok I just ordered (was sitting on the fence throughout the first batch). :)
No need to hurry the shipping though as I'm not home until May 1 (to Norway though so shipping probably takes a while anyway).

Definitely looking forward to operating some front panel switches again! Haven't done that since my minicomputer days way back in time! :)

-Tor
Last edited by Tor on April 13th, 2014, 2:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Altair 8800 Clones are Shipping!

Postby smp » April 12th, 2014, 11:12 am

Tor wrote:Ok I just ordered ...


Hi Tor,

Congratulations! You're gonna love it.

I am having a blast actually using this machine, as opposed to trying to use one of my vintage systems, worrying about whether or not I'm making mistakes or am I seeing some sort of hardware failure. Great fun.

I will look forward to hearing how you like it, once you get back home and give it a try.

smp
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Re: Altair 8800 Clones are Shipping!

Postby Tor » May 13th, 2014, 3:05 pm

Got mine some time ago.
As I mentioned earlier it's decades since I last programmed anything via front panel switches. It's much faster and easier than I had thought. I'm not used to octal on micros, but I used octal on minis so a quick mind change and I enter one or two octets at the same time - that's what we have multiple fingers for - the third one as needed, and 'deposit next'. Lots of fun. Cross-assemble on a pc, look at list output and enter. And run!

:-)

-Tor
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