Guys
Wonder what Byte Issue #1 might be worth?
Couldn't afford the IMSAI or Altair at the time. But read everything about it. Jumped in on the SOL-20 and got it as a kit of parts. Had to wait 6 months after the glamour adds started showing up in Byte. Didn't work at all at first, but a plated through hole had not been completed or reported by (PT). Fixed very easily with a jumper!
Then it would quit after about 1/2 hour of operation. So I wrapped it in bath towels in quadrants and stuck it in the freezer along with a long power and monitor cable, until I found the quadrant of the board which was causing the problem! (Freeze Zone) Figured it must be the 8080A so got one from Radio Shack (they had just started selling them for $19 bux). Lo it worked for the next 3 years.
What fun it was! Used a TT Mod 15 as line printer. RS ascii keyboard kit as keyboard, and Sony tape recorder as storage. First project was a hand entered machine language CW trainer! First year spent hand patching code in 768 bytes of ram left over for user after initialization.
Ended up with and ALS8 board in proms INSTANT LOADING! 15 k tape Basic, with only 16 K of memory (4 x 4 K S-100 buss cards which took about 20 amps at 5 volts! A heater! kept the shack warm in the winter!)
First Atlanta Computer Society meeting I went to had an Apple 1 on the back tables, and about 80 members. Speaker of the night was Dennis Hayes, showing his wire wrapped S-100 buss 110 modem! Writing was on the wall, so went the Apple 2, Vic-20, (Formed Victims group in Atlanta), Commodore 64 (Till Commodore published my home phone number in the 'user groups'!)
Ahhh yep "OLD langs signs"
Enjoyed the walk down computer memory lane!
Eric2
-------------- Original message --------------
From: KD5NWA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
That might be worth a lot of money to a museum, I know a friend that sold a Altair for $40,000. I could kick myself, I owned Altair #19, personally delivered and signed inside by Ed Roberts, I use to know him well. Funny thing his dad use to look just like Jimmy Carter the President.
Young people can be quite dense, I got to know him, and often I would give him rides or pick him up from the Miami airport when he was flying to Albuquerque, It took me a while to figure out that he was the President of MITS he never mentioned it. One time I complained that my kit for the Altair had not arrived, when he came back from New Mexico he carried Altair #19 with him and gave it to me, he told me he knew a couple of people at Altair. Being dumb as a stump when it came to personal matters, I still didn't get it, until one day I noticed a stack of mail at his office addressed to Ed Roberts president of MITS, duh, the light bulb finally lit up.
My Altair was in mint condition, with every board they ever made, and fully functional, my wife nagged until I threw it away, four month later, my friend called me and wanted to know about my Altair, a Museum in Japan was interested. When I found how much my friend got for his (which wasn't functional) I very calmly told her how much making a little extra room in the garage had cost, she was unusually quiet for several days.
At 07:13 AM 12/30/2005, W0UN -- John Brosnahan wrote:
At 12:43 AM 12/30/2005, Tom Clark, W3IWI wrote:
Eric offered the sidebar:
Guys don't forget my:We used to call them the Proctology-20. They went the way of the CommodeDoor C-64. I had a couple of Imsai's myself. I remeber my first 256 byte RAM card and writing a one-D PONG game for the front panel status switches.
Processor Technology Sol - 20 . . .
Tom--
I was the Colorado dealer for IMSAI when I started the Denver Amateur Computer Society --
I guess that was about 1977 (+/- a year). I still have three of the IMSAIs and most notably
I have a fourth one that is still a KIT in an unopened box. I sold the company, Intermountain
Digital, to Don Lund, WA0IQN.
What is even more amazing is that the IMSAI STILL LIVES. As the IMSAI Series TWO.
Looks like an old IMSAI but it is a case for a modern computer. If you want a bit of real
nostalgia check out http://www.imsai.net/
73--John W0UN
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat.
You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles.
Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way:
you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference
is that there is no cat." -- Albert Einstein
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www.qrpradio.com
"I fail to see why doing the same thing over and over and getting the same results every time is insanity: I've almost proved it isn't; only a few more tests now and I'm sure results will differ this time ... "
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