RE: [N8VEM-S100:6820] Re: Reorder of S-100 8-slot Backplane PCB

["Eric Osman" <er...@osmancrew.com>]

Jeff -

 

It might interest you to know that a factory built Altair with just 1K RAM and CPU, in mint condition and a low serial number, recently sold on Ebay for $10K.  It sounds like yours might be in very good condition as well.

 

A couple years ago I restored my Altair, which I built from a kit back in 1975.  Even though mine is not exactly "mint", I found this recent sale interesting.  It would take a lot more than $10K to get it out of my hands.  Building that kit was a big step on my way to a very rewarding career.

 

- Eric

 

-----Original Message-----
From: n8vem...@googlegroups.com [mailto:n8vem...@googlegroups.com]On Behalf Of Jeff Albrecht
Sent: Friday, April 24, 2015 9:29 PM
To: n8vem...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [N8VEM-S100:6820] Re: Reorder of S-100 8-slot Backplane PCB

It's an original kit my Dad bought. I think I have the invoice for it. He never finished it nor the CPU and Ram boards. He's got one of the narrow boards and an unsoldered full size backplane upgrade. He moved on to Imsai, Cromemco, Xitan and Polymorphic. I picked up with CompuPro equipment and his California Computer Systems. I ran a BBS off the Imsai running Bye510 etc... I've recently rebuilt the Imsai power supply. I have several of the old boards running like Imsai 8080, Vector Graphics 8k static and such and I picked up a JAIR from Josh. I don't know how soon if ever I'll finish Dad's Altair kit. Josh suggested to me it may be worth more unfinished... My first efforts in Altair would probably be an 8080b a friend gave me including a couple floppy drives, need some ?37 pin? cables and a hard sectored boot disk.

So many projects, so little time.... 

 - jeffa

On Friday, April 24, 2015 at 8:47:32 PM UTC-7, John Parsons wrote:

Jeff,

This Altair kit you have...is it an original kit? If so, you will be (un)happy to know that not only are there a lot of wires, but the wires that came with the kit are very brittle. After you get them soldered in, if you wiggle them they will break off, and you have to clean out the holes and re-solder them. I suggest you get some different white wire to do your wiring. I don't remember many ribbon cables back in '75 but they existed, just not on the Altair.

Whether this is a new kit or an old one, would you mind sharing where you got it? I have an original original one and sometimes would like to have original or reproduced parts for it

Now about those 16 K memory boards that have (count 'em!) about 3200 solder connections. You'll be good with soldering when you're done :-)

Best,

John.

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