War Games

[jack at coats.org (Jack Coats)]

<old timer muzing -- warning>

By the time I got rid of my Altair 8800, it was a 'significantly modded' box.
Built a power supply worthy of it, the same size as the Altair.  Had 16 slots,
mostly full of 4K and 8K RAM (5W of 5V power each) ro 60K of RAM.  Z80 CPU,
Processor Technology 3P+S board (3 8bit parallel ports, and a serial 
port), and
a Processor Tech video board (16 lines of 64 char/line - memory mapped) that I
displayed on a modified 9" TV set (adding an isolation transformer for the TV
was VERY important).  Also, a DCHayes 300 baud modem (not accoustic coupled),
and a 2K EPROM board where a friend and I burned an Intel 'Intelec' compatable
monitor.  This allowed not having to mod the IO part of CP/M, it already had
the hooks built in to use the Intelec entry points.  But we added floppy disk
drivers, boot software, etc to it, and a console debug stuff, in addition to
video drivers the Intelec did not have normally (It assumed having a teletype
hooked on).  I think I still have the Oliver Engineering paper tape reader I
built from a kit (really reliable, over 10,000 characters per second without a
read error!  The crowning jewel was the AI Cybernetics Speach 
Synthesizer. Made in Las Cruses NM.  I went to visit the makers in 
their house trailer.  But
it worked VERY well.  Took only about 10 bytes per second for normal speach,
that was like someone talking with a heavy accent. -- I think I sent it 
back to
Wirt Atmar, the guy that owns AI Cybernetics, last year as a 
conversation piece.

A friend interfaced a 80 column card reader to his Altair.

Another friend put 2 Hobbs hour meters (like used in airplaines) on a Z80
system, and sold time on it for $5/hr to a couple of small companies back in
the 73-76 time frame.
</old timer muzing>

They were good days then.   But I don't want to go back.

... Back to checking backup reports ... Oh well.

Quoting markw at mohawksoft.com:

>>
>> On Mar 19, 2006, at 10:12 PM, markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:
>>
>>> Just thought I'd mention the movie "War Games."
>>>
>>> How many of us on this group had the audio modem, an IMSAI or
>>> Altair (I
>>> had an 1802 I built myself, then I had a CP/M box.)
>>
>> Speaking of CP/M, my first computer was a TI 99 4/A with an audio
>> tape deck for storing files (which we still have somewhere), and then
>> I learned LOGO on one of these:
>>
>> http://oldcomputers.net/kayproii.html
>>
>
> Gosh, I miss my Kaypro. Say what you want, it was a great little computer.
> While, by almost every measure, the computers we have today are better, I
> still miss tinkering with the old Z80 systems.
>
> I also had a Visual 1050.
>
>
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-- 
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
   -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
      Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
   -- Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - ), "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's
      third law)