There will be an Altair 8800micro workshop at the VCF Midwest 5.0. Come and build a Altair micro and have lots of fun in a relaxed classroom setting. There are only 10 spaces available so don’t miss out. Price of the workshop is only the cost of the kit $199.95. There are going to be 2 options, first is where the front panel is already built and tested making the workshop run about 1-1.5 hours. The other is a full kit that the builder will assemble everything including the front panel. Anything on that option that can not be finished at the exhibit will require the builder to take home and finish.

Workshop signup page:  http://www.brielcomputers.com/workshop.html

More information on the Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 5.0 can be found here:

http://chiclassiccomp.org/vcfmw

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.

After a month of intense programming, the Altair 8800 Micro is now functional. Early tests show it runs all 4K BASIC commands and 8K is now being tested. The Micro version is one of 3 planned versions of the Altair replica line. The full sized panel will also be available with a future option of the AltairPC, a complete PC Case with the look of a Altair and your latest PC inside!

As of April 3, 2010 the project is nearing production status. The final prototypes are being designed and will be tested thru May. It is looking like June we will start taking preorders.

Things have been very busy around here. Orders have been flying off the shelf and there hasn’t been much time to work on things. However, the Altair project has received some attention and I think we are gaining traction. It is still a long ways off, and anything can go wrong to blow up the project, but there is a prototype. My idea is to have 2-3 different versions of the Altair, one as a PC that looks like an Altair, and the front panel can be programmed via the switches and run BASIC. Inside, you can have your latest Intel machine running Linux or Windows. A front panel only option will be made available for those who don’t want a full PC case.

The 3rd option is what I’m working on right now. It is code named Altair8800 Micro. It is a small (10″X7″.5X3″) case containing the Altair prototype and the PockeTerm terminal all in one case. The hardware testing phase is 95% complete and I am onto creating the Altair in firmware. This is a long and slow process, but things are moving along.

The front panel on the Micro is not exactly the same as the full size Altair. The toggle switches are replaced with small slide switches. There are also 4 less status LED’s. Programming the memory is identical to the Altair.

A custom version of the PockeTerm is incorporated onboard with VGA and composite video output choices (or both), PS/2 keyboard.

I’ve also added a SD card slot that the PockeTerm can use to send programs into the Altair. This section I have not yet tested and it will be the last thing I add in features.

So, where is the project right now. I have the LED’s and switches tested working. I have the core emulation written and can do simple instructions like JMP and NOP.

I can single step through instructions (that was not easy to do) and that appears to be working great.

I am slowly adding instructions but this will take a while. Anybody who might see this and have Atmel AVR experience that can help with the 8080 emulation, feel free to email me. I’m still many days/weeks away from adding all the instructions but right now things are looking good. Once all the instructions are in I’ll work on debugging instruction errors. Please understand that I’m a 6502 guy and the 8080 is pretty new to me. I’m looking into painting the case blue to match the Altair color scheme.

I don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up, anything major can still go wrong to blow up the project but I know people have emulated 8080 machines with Atmel AVR microcontrollers so it is very possible. I’m not using their code but I use it as a reference when needed.

Specs:

Emulated 8080 run at speed or faster than original
32K RAM with BASIC loaded at power up (still in the works may have to load from SD card)
VGA or composite TV video output to a monitor
PS/2 keyboard
SD card slot to load/store software through terminal section
Battery option (not tested, may not work well with so many LED’s)
Diode circuit protection for battery/DC input.

More to come…