Altair-Duino Experimenter Emulator Kit

THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY…

…is of little use to you? Do you long for the days of your youth when computers were new, and exciting (and perhaps useful only to those with the “know how”?) Or maybe the early days of computers were before you were even born, and you simply want to know what the big deal was? Or maybe you’re like me, a mere child when you first heard the notion that people could actually have a computer in their very own home!

I was a child of 9 years old when the Altair 8800 was announced on the pages of Popular Electronics magazine in January of 1975. It captured my imagination – and I knew that someday I would build and own my own computer. I never did get an Altair 8800 – the computer revolution was started and it moved FAST. The heyday of the Altair lasted only a short while. The first computer I built was 7 years later when I built the Sinclair ZX81 kit.

Well imagine my surprise 42 years later when David Hansel of Brookline, MA published his Arduino-based Altair 8800 emulator project on hackster.io! I knew this was my chance to finally build an Altair 8800! Sure, there are other Altair 8800 clones out there, but all seemed out of reach for a simple working-man hobbyist.

Once I saw David’s code and design, I knew I could improve on it and make an affordable, easy-to-build kit. My first “beta-testers” were my 12 and 14 year old sons! Yes, you can still follow David’s original plan if you wish. If you want a ready-to-go kit, look no further.

This is my newly-released "Experimenter" version of the kit. It includes an aluminum frame, clear acrylic back and rear panel including a VT100 emulator (with connectors for VGA and a USB keyboard), an RS232 serial port, audio jack (emulating the Processor Technology Music System), USB serial connector, SD card access, and power jack. The kit also includes a micro SD card with productivity software and games for Microsoft BASIC, Altair DOS, CP/M, and more. You can also include the optional detachable backplane with a 26-pin connector. It allows for the addition of up to five expansion cards and includes a 5v power regulator to provide additional power to the expansion cards (when power is supplied through the included power adapter.)

The kit also has the option to include the expansion card kit and the LED Output Register card that is programmable through BASIC. You can find out more about expansion cards designed by David Hansel at his Github page.

This is a cycle-accurate recreation of the original Altair 8800. What does that mean? It means the Intel 8080 CPU is emulated, as is some of the basic I/O (disk drives, serial ports, etc.) but everything else is REAL Altair machine code and CP/M that was created more than 40 years ago!

Includes everything you need to build a fully-functional re-creation of the Altair 8800 computer (professionally made printed circuit boards, all components, pre-programmed genuine Arduino Due, assembly instructions and operations manual, and more). It can connect to a VGA monitor and USB keyboard for VT100 emulation, a standard ASCII serial terminal, or you can use a serial emulator (PuTTY or Tera Term) on your laptop.

Assembly will require intermediate soldering skills (all through-hole components) and can be completed in 4-5 hours. Assembly instructions are available for download below (under the documentation link).