Creative use of Altair replica case

[Tim Geuy]

Somebody needed to post this :)

https://youtu.be/KsiwCcVvJ6A?si=psJz54F6Aitr5AgC

[Tim Geuy]

Personally, I prefer my creative use. I finally have the new home for my vintage Digicomp Research Pascall-100 system. I built this system in the early 80s, and it has lived in a homemade wood case up until now. This also let me say goodby to the old linear power supply - a scarry beast at best.

[Chris Davis]

Thanks for sharing that!  They called me a month ago and begged me to sell them an Altair-Duino Pro.  I ended up selling them my last personal Altair-Duino.  I guess I'll have to build one again when I finally get my pallets of cases in a couple months.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

Nice looking build!  The wiki:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_MicroEngine   doesn't have any photos, but plenty of info about the machines. 

Back in the early 1970s I took some CICS classes at UofM IT ... in classes under Marvin Stein, we touched into several (I think 22 different programming languages) over a few quarters and Pascal was the last language where we spent the most time with.  It all ran on a CDC Cyber 74 mainframe.  

Now day's I wish I had kept all my punch cards for the programs we had to write ... yes, we used an IBM card punch, input the cards into a 1024 Terminal and got printouts of the program and results on the 1024 terminal.  That terminal was about 5' tall, probably 6' long and 4' front to back ... it was huge, but only read punch cards and printed on wide format fanfold paper.  

Sadly, going through the programming languages so fast, I didn't really get a chance to have the knowledge sink into my thick skull which caused me to bail from programming and go back to mostly flying freight and journalists around.  

I wonder how this Pascal-100 speed compares to the Cyber 74 ... that would be an interesting comparison for almost the same age machines.  

.

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

Building a gamer PC seems a little stupid, OTOH, using a smaller ATX motherboard and cheaper build of a basic PC inside the reproduction Altair 8800 cabinet to act as the console terminal to the Altair-Duino inside seems to be a smart way for demos like at VCF shows or your local library, Boys & Girls clubs etc.   

.

[John Kennedy]

Nice project! Unfortunately I'm out of the US at the moment, or I would be sneaking into the conference center to see attend Build and make hmmmm noises at this Altair!

Hope AdWaterAndStir got due acknowledgement!

[Chris Davis]

They linked my website in the description and so far more than 50 people have signed up for notifications when the Altair-Duino Pro or replica case are available.

Please send photos if you find them!  As far as I know, there should be at least seven of my Altair-Duinos or cases around Build.  Honestly I was considering going this year, and now I really wish I was.

[da...@hansels.net]

I feel like they missed a big opportunity by not showing off Altair (i.e. Microsoft) BASIC!

I'm assuming they are powering the AltairDuino from one of the PC's USB ports and therefore
they already have a serial connection to the AltairDuino (via USB).

They should be able to just open a (TeraTerm/Putty) terminal, connect to the Due (the default
configuration uses USB) and then with SW0+2 up and AUX1 down start 4k BASIC. Could have
shown off the original Microsoft BASIC product on their latest-and-greatest PC hardware.

David

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

I think their pitch was to sell build-it-yourself gamer PC components.   Their job is making gamer PCs and stuffing one into the reproduction Altair 8800 case was a gimmick to show off their PC building skills. 

OTOH, it is too bad they didn't show off the Altair-Duino inside, but they probably weren't as up to speed with using something like TeraTerm since they mentioned they didn't have a "terminal" to connect to the Altair-Duino part of the computer.  

The good thing is Chris might get a big bump in orders for the Altair 8800c cabinets.  

.

[udo....@freenet.de]

da...@hansels.net schrieb am Montag, 19. Mai 2025 um 03:59:20 UTC+2:

They should be able to just open a (TeraTerm/Putty) terminal, connect to the Due (the default 

configuration uses USB) and then with SW0+2 up and AUX1 down start 4k BASIC. Could have
shown off the original Microsoft BASIC product on their latest-and-greatest PC hardware.

No, they would have shown that their latest-and-greatest PC hardware, able to render

photorealistic 3D worlds in realtime, can be used as dumb terminal for some ancient

machine, not useful for anything nowadays. But it is not necessary to show that, of

course can such a machine do that.

[Richard Fadden]

I think the key topic is: what do you want to do with your computer?

So the video of Linus Tech Tips and the nVidia 5090 that he put in a PC within the case - this gives us clues as to all of our behavior, ours, Linus, the guy playing the video game, and those who are making the video about using an Altair or Duino, etc..

Roughly speaking the only use for a 970,000 MIPS computer (that's my estimate from some research on the speed of my new gaming PC, just meant for gaming, and this ultra machine is now over two years old) plus the world's most powerful Graphics Chip and board, the nVidia 5090 is to play highly realistic modern 3D games.

We are too close to the thing and we can not notice that any PC (with Linux or Windows) from about 2010 on - is all we need for modern use, and all speed-up since that time of 4-core x64 with about 16 Gig of RAM - the only reason for any of that is for playing highly realistic modern 3D games.

Example:  I wasn't doing any modern 3D gaming until the time that I started building a new PC in 2023 to be able to play these games (to join my Step-son who is now remote, in special online get-togethers where we use teamwork in an advanced game).

So I built a modern gaming machine out of the best high-value parts (not going for the top high-end) and I started playing these games.  Yes I needed that new machine to play these games.

But I want to call attention to a subtle thing related to all of this: I keep my gaming machine separate, I only use it for playing Destiny 2, etc..  and when I am not using that machine I'm back on my circa 2011 PC with an Intel i7 2600K processor (4 cores, 8 threads, 3.7 GHz x64 processor).  In other words I use My Precious for anything and everything other than this elite high end 3D gaming.  I have no reason to use the new machine for anything other than high end 3D gaming.

I'm saying we forget the fact that we haven't needed any of the developments or speed improvements of our daily workstations since about 2010.

We see the commercials, we see the articles about the latest developments and we roughly can not notice that we don't need a faster PC.   My Precious is 'only' 110,000 MIPS.  How could I get by with an old computer like that ? (sarcasm)

Answer: we are too close to the thing to understand what we're doing.

I realized long ago that the only thing driving the industry to act like we needed more was playing high-end 3D games on the PC.  For example if you had decided to use a PS-5 for gaming and just stick with a separate console, then one would not be building a more powerful PC for "doing that thing" that isn't 3D gaming.  There is no 'thing' to be doing that needs a more powerful PC.

So the sad thing is: what Linus is emphasizing is the only thing that requires a modern PC:  high-end gaming.

Let's say you were given a budget to re-make a video or present computing for a 60-minutes style presentation.  With hindsight you could do it better, right?   Imagine your video or presentation and there's no 3D gaming.  What are you going to show that is impressive?   Whatever you show it could be cool for us but it would not be impressive as seen on TV.

So there is only one application that drives everything and that is high-end 3D gaming on a PC (and if it were all on Console then we would have nothing driving Personal Computers).

This brings us back to what we like:  We are not in that high end.  We are not striving for the ultimate in 3D gaming, and so, something else is motivating us.

Bottom Line:  You could NOT impress the masses with what we are doing.   Someone like Linus has no choice - to be doing anything meaningful it has to be the highest of the high-end 3D gaming or else it's nothing.

-----------------------------

I think we should have topics on our forums (like Altair-Duino, S100Computes, Altair, VCF forums, etc.) where we analyze or break down what it is that we like and why.

I could start by mentioning what I've figured out about my own pursuit of an Altair related hobby, but that's a small thing compared to the above observation (that there's nothing other than high-end 3D gaming driving the industry).

Our interest in vintage is something else.  I've taken this apart and I can skip the vast middle-ground and say at the very heart, or core is fun.  We are having fun, and it's quite hard to break-down and communicate why we like certain things.  That's where we need to segway to an activity on our forums:  let's break apart why we love this stuff.  Let's recognize it's real, and it really can be a lot of fun!

Cheers.

On Mon, May 19, 2025 at 2:37 AM John Kennedy <johntk...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[udo....@freenet.de]

Rick Fadden schrieb am Dienstag, 20. Mai 2025 um 21:03:32 UTC+2:

Bottom Line:  You could NOT impress the masses with what we are doing.   Someone like Linus has no choice - to be doing anything meaningful it has to be the highest of the high-end 3D gaming or else it's nothing.

Exactely.

CPU executed 1681143866 JP instructions in 3 seconds

clock frequency =  5603.81 MHz

A Z80 CPU with 5.6 GHz clock frequency :) Quit impressive yes? For a few hundred people on the planet,

for all others it means nothing. But I don't care, I am having fun with it and that is all what counts.

 

[Walt Perko]

Hi, 

The Z80B is a 6MHz CPU chip ... very common ... I've hear some people pushing up to 8MHz and even 10MHz.  

Personally, I'm happy at 2MHz and it would be interesting to see if a 4MHz really showed any significant difference in the old software or even my new DAZZLER programs.  

.

[udo....@freenet.de]

This is why one can set the CPU clock frequency in the z80pack virtual machines. Get one of the

GEEK devices and try different clock settings between 1 and 10 MHz, and you'll see how much

different the Dazzler output is.

[Chris Davis]

Here's a video I was sent that shows how these were used at the Build conference: https://bit.ly/3FnCIBV

[John Kennedy]

Conspicuous lack of ashtrays.And sexism.

On Wednesday, May 21, 2025 at 10:42:32 PM UTC+1 John Galt wrote:

It is pretty cool they sort of recreated a Microsoft office of the 1970s. 

[Chris Davis]

Ha ha I immediately looked for ashtrays when I first saw it.