There are some great Altair simulators out there. I'll summarize

[Rick Fadden]

I want to make sure everyone has seen this (the stuff I'm showing below):

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Altair Simulator on the PC:

Some time around 2003 or 2004 I found a package I could download that fully simulated an Altair 8800 and most importantly it had a full simulation of the Altair on the screen with switches and lights (in a on-screen window you can move or re-size).

On Windows you could use the mouse and click the switches.  A full simulator ran (the same idea as the Altair-Duino) which turned the front-panel lights on and off in real-time.

Using the simulated front panel switches you could halt the processor, single-step it, watch the instructions being executed, and you could use the front panel to enter code with the switches, and then run that code.

Essentially it was a PC based software Altair, fully realistic, with all of the features.

The package also included binary files which contained various versions of Altair Basic, and it included the simulated floppy disk with disk images so one could run CP/M.

As I describe this free PC download package, keep in mind everything I'm typing sounds like I'm describing the Altair-Duino.  Since you guys use an Altair-Duino this should allow me to save some typing...

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Some time later (maybe a few years later) I ran across a reference to the SIMH package, a full simulation of the Altair, and I'll describe the connection with the above described Altair simulator.

This also was a free to download package that I downloaded and used on my PC.

The SIMH web site emphasized that SIMH was the project to make available running simulations of all sorts of computers.  They listed all of the machines they had working so far, and they listed other simulations that were being developed.

Roughly it was like they had 7 or 8 computers complete including the Altair / Imsai, and they were working toward far bigger, more exotic past machines such as the VAX.  In other words SIMH was a massive project with many people contributing to simulate all sort of older computers.

When I downloaded the SIMH project and I ran the Altair simulation it had the same interactive front-panel display as the earlier package I had encountered.   (Does SIMH work this way now?  I'm not seeing any sort of front panel, but long ago that was a major feature of the simulated Altair.  I need to dig deeper.)

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Today I answered a question here on the A-D forum and I mentioned that I had used one of these simulator packages for developing 8080 Assembly language.   In one of these packages you're running a CP/M environment with a very large simulated hard disk, and 'inside' that environment were all sorts of great software tools, and most importantly that environment supported very easy importing and exporting of files to your PC.

There was even a .COM program in CPM that would give you a directory of the files on your PC (that is freaky when you think about it).

So, back when I was using this package (2015 or so) I edited my source on the PC and I used this environment to Assemble, Link, Run, and I exported the .HEX file and I used that when burning an EPROM to be installed in my Altair.

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After mentioning that Altair software development is far easier when using the simulated environment on the PC, I then went looking for the various packages on my hard drives in order to refresh my memory.

I found the package that works really well for software development, but then as I checked into details I noted this particular 8080 simulator did not automatically run the Altair front panel display.  I checked further and I'm not even seeing this front panel display when looking in the latest SIMH archive.

Wow, at some point in time, someone stopped including the best aspect of these 8080 simulators, the Front Panel.

That is really shocking, and I am continuing to check into this.

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Looking further, in the 'downloads' directory on my system I found a circa-2014 version of the Altair/Imsai simulator which *does* include the Altair front panel display.

I'm running this now, and I just used the 'Snip' tool to take a snapshot image of the front panel display.  That image is what I pasted in, above (that looks small, the image I snipped was quite large on the display).

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I suspect you guys know all about these simulations.  I'm raising the topic.    In the previous post I got the impression that new people here might not realize that you can develop 8080 Assembly Language on your PC via use of these simulator packages.

In case some folks aren't up to speed on this, click the Web links below to see the amazing set of disks/software available online that you can run on a simulated Altair on your PC (Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix).

We can move much of this over to the Altair-Duino environment.  I'll write further on this topic in some replies.  I'll describe how in the future the A-D could automagically pull these files from you PC.

Here's a link to a page that shows a vast set of files that go along with the Altair Simulator and which can also be used with the Altair-Duino:

This Web page shows all of the Goodies which are available to us (and have been available for a long, long time):

 Web page giving Altair Simulator and a vast set of Disks with everything ever written for an S-100 computer

Here's the manual: Manual for the Altair Simulator

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Cheers!

[Tom Wilson]

I think Altair32 is my favorite simulator, but it does have some shortcomings. One of these days, I'm hoping to dig in and make some changes to it. Things I'd like to change are:

* Remembering mounted disks for the next session

* The tiny front panel window - that should be sizeable or at least have a couple of different sizes to pick from

* Add a quick-start "boot from disk" option to get into CP/M without having to set the switches by hand every time

[Tom Wilson]

I also really want to write a Front Panel support program for Altair32 to support the Altairduino.... Then you would be able to use the Altairduino's front panel switches, but have the emulator run on the PC.

If I can't figure that out, I may build his circuit and install it in my Altair Clone front panel.

[Udo Munk]

On Wednesday, February 12, 2020 at 1:13:22 AM UTC+1, Rick Fadden wrote:

Wow, at some point in time, someone stopped including the best aspect of these 8080 simulators, the Front Panel.

That is really shocking, and I am continuing to check into this.

Here have some with front panel:

https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/z80pack/index.html