It’s official, we are going to the Maker Faire May 18th and May 19th. The Maker Faire is a gathering of people who make things, naturally this is a perfect fit for us. Last year we only brought the Altair 8800micro for people to play with and our table was always crowded. This year we are going to bring all the platforms and some that under development.

We are probably going to need help. If anybody is planning on attending and would like to help, we can compensate with a free entry pass. You must spend at least 4 hours at the table in order to qualify. If interested, please email me and I will be making a decision on that this month. You must be familiar with our products enough to talk about them to people who come up.

We are going to be hosting a workshop at the VCFSE in Roswell, GA just north of Atlanta on April 20th and 21st. There are 4 different kits to choose from from beginner to more experienced builders. If you have never experienced the fun of a workshop now is the time. Building a kit in a classroom type setting is great fun and really has that 70′s computer feel to it. This will be a next generation workshop as I can’t physically be onsite but will be using a video conference setup to assist in the workshop. There will be experienced people there with plenty of soldering experience to help those who need guidance with soldering. I will be available on video chat to help answer more kit related questions or just to chat and answer general questions. So, you can not only build a kit, but pick my brain.

The workshop is free, simply order the kit you want to build from the VCFSE Workshop page.

Registration ends April 12th and is limited to 12 entries, so don’t miss out!

JUST ADDED: Tools needed for the workshop

Soldering iron 25-40 watt, 30-35 best
solder
wire cutters to cut the extra length off of resistors/capacitors, etc.

Sign ups are now open and on a first come first serve basis with limited seating. You can order your workshop here:

VCFSE WORKSHOP

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Vince

We finally have the Altair micro serial number 1 up for auction on Ebay. 50% of the proceeds go to the Wounded Warrior Project. I have friends who have used the services offered by Wounded Warriors and this is my chance to give back. Please help support this project. The auction can be found here:

Altair 8800micro S/N 1

The long awaited RAM drive for the Altair 8800micro is now available to order. We are ordering boards this week and orders will ship in about 2 weeks when the boards arrive. You can choose from kit or assembled as is with most of our products. If you have an Altair now is your chance to get a RAM drive and have a full operating system (CP/M) with 2 virtual RAM drives. To load CP/M simply load a disk image onto the SD card, then transfer it over to the RAM drive A or B and run the bootloader to boot from the RAM drive. visit the store or the Altair 8800micro order page to order yours now.

Our first ever sale last year was a huge success so we decided to hold it as an annual event. These prices are incredibly low. If you can’t solder, or just want to save money, now you can get many of our popular kits assembled at the kit price! Save up to $80 on a kit. If you’ve been wanting a kit but don’t know how to solder or don’t think you could build one, let us build it for you for free!

All of our assembled kits are built upon order so expect some delay processing orders do to heavy demand.

I CAN’T SOLDER SALE PAGE

Sale ends Sunday 9/16/2012

We’ve been a little busy around here and things are going to get a lot busier in the near future. We have been in Talks with Thomas “Todd” Fischer to acquire the IP and remaining inventory of IMSAI. With this pending purchase we will be able to roll out new IMSAI series 2 machines in the near future. There is still some work to do but a tentative agreement has been reached.

In order to raise the capitol required for the purchase we will do a Kickstarter project that will ask for a donation to help “Save IMSAI”. If you have ever wanted to be a part of something big, this is your chance. We are working out rewards for donations but even $5 or $20 will help. I’m doing something I don’t like to do and that is to ask for help to save IMSAI. Together we can reboot IMSAI and make something incredible. Please wait until the Kickstarter project is up before making a donation. It is really an exciting time here.

Vince Briel

I am doing a small run of the cassette interface boards. 25 units will be produced and we are looking for people to help beta test them. You can order yours here:

CASSETTE INTERFACE

Kits are $59 and assembled boards are $79

We just returned from our trip to Kansas and other locations. Kansas Fest is one of the best events you can attend as a fan of vintage computers. Nearly a week with seminars and hanging out with other like minded people too much to list. I’ll be there every chance I get to go. New experiments have been started with interfacing a Bluetooth dongle to an Apple II opening up new wireless possibilities in the near future. The cassette interface for the replica 1 will BETA test starting tomorrow with 25 units to be issued to those who can help with debugging and running other tests. I ran some tests while at Kansas Fest and everything appears to work great on a single 5V supply! Look for an order page on that tomorrow.

The workload the last 2 weeks has been heavy and finding time to prepare for Kansas Fest 2012 has been difficult. I am hosting a workshop and participants can sign up and build a selected kit to build. I will be helping those who need guidance during the workshop to get their kits built. If you were there last year, you know how much fun it was. If you want to attend the workshop but can’t order a kit until Kansas Fest has started, drop me an email and I’ll put a kit aside for you.

The official website for the workshop is here: Workshop

Kansas Fest is a gathering of Apple II fans that has been going on for many years. Last year we hosted a workshop with 20 people building the Apple II MP3 player card. 20 people left the workshop with working boards and smiles everywhere. We will once again be attending Kansas Fest and hope to host another workshop! If you are interested in building a kit at KFest, feel free to email me and I’ll put you down on a list.

Kansas Fest official website: KFEST

Vince