Altair 8800

Rick Stevens ricks at alldigital.com
Fri Jun 19 01:16:37 UTC 2015


On 06/18/2015 06:01 PM, Fulko Hew wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 7:45 PM, Rick Stevens <ricks at alldigital.com> wrote:
>
>> Bus termination wasn't mandatory, but it sure as hell helped. Some
>> company (can't remember who) developed an active terminator board that
>> was much better than just passive resistors,
>
> I don't have silk screening on mine, but I'm pretty sure it was Processor Tech
> that made it.  I bypassed the 4 slot and went straight to that backplane,
> and its 16 slots.  It was the IMSAI that put in a 22 slot backplane.

Yeah, it could have been PT. I was thinking them, Cromemco or TDL
(Technical Design Labs, who also made the Z80 processor board).

Yes, IMSAI had the 22-slot single-piece motherboard and IIRC an 18A 8V
power supply (more like 10V) and a front panel with the bit switches
laid out in hex rather than the octal used on the Altair (although I
think the Altair was prettier). When I built my three Altairs, the
single-piece motherboard wasn't available.

> PS.  Thanks for making me look at mine.  My machine was warm!
> Turns out my add-on 8V supply has been on for the last couple of months
> and I didn't even know it.

Heheheheh! Well, it was a nice trip down memory lane. Now I gotta go
dig through my various Amiga stuff (I had at least one of every Amiga
made) and see what's still there.
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