NOW TAKING ORDERS FOR 2nd RUN.

After several years of R&D, the time is finally here! Please note this is the most complete project I’ve done thus far and there is a lot to the kit. You will need your own power supply, keyboard and monitor. The power supply will need to be 7-9 volt DC 2.1mm positive center. The keyboard is a ps/2 and the monitor can be VGA or composite video monitor or TV. Your kit will include 2 blank pcb’s, all the components for the pcb’s (chips, LED’s, switches, sockets, etc), 1 case, 2 panels (front/rear) and a CD with the manual and other Altair documents and software panels.

There is a supply shortage on the ATMEGA8515 used as the CPU of the Altair 8800micro. We have 50 now, and more will be available in July. So, we will take 50 preorders. If you don’t make the first batch of 50, I will let you know and you can choose to wait or reorder in July. The front and rear panel board order is being placed this week and will take 4-6 weeks to arrive. Once the front/rear panels are in, I will start filling orders. This will take some time but I expect to ship 50 orders within 2 weeks. I will email you with updates as they are available.

Since you are receiving a revision 0 unit, your help will be appreciated with reporting any errors or bugs. This will help making the system the best it can be. If you have any questions at any time, feel free to ask.

Here is the special page for preorders. This page is only known to the people who asked to be on the list. I will not make the preorder page known to everyone else until Wednesday so you have time to order.

http://www.brielcomputers.com/preorder.html

Feel free to sign up and I will email you with your unit number.

Vince

Well, great news!  The new front panel pcb’s arrived today along with prototypes of the front panels. The new panel looks great with switches and appears to fit good. The momentary switches for step, exam/exam next and deposit/deposit next is exactly like the original Altair. I have the switches sitting deeper in the case so only the toggle paddle is out making the switches look smaller.

Here’s a quick picture of the new front panel. The hole cutouts are not perfect due to mfg issue but the production version will look great. If you look close you can see that the top row of switches is close to the bottom row of switches. This is one of the issues I expected to have going from the tiny slide to the much larger toggle switches. Still, way better feel to the machine.

Looking at a upper view you can see that the switches don’t appear to stick out too far and compliment the case just fine. Overall, I’m really happy with the new look of the Altair 8800 micro. The final prototype mainboards are due in Friday or Monday and I’ll get more pictures out of those too.

The Altair 8800 micro is getting closer to completion. We have just sent off for a final prototype to test. The latest prototype will have toggle switches for a more authentic look and feel. We are targetting June for the release and will probably take preorders in May. The estimated price is $199 but the formal announcement will be made once we get confirmation on production prices. Work will begin on the manual soon since there are many features on the micro that were not on the original Altair. Photo’s of the final prototype will be available when it is built.