
Altair 8800 Simulator - robeerob
https://s2js.com/altair/sim.html
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MisterTea
Very nice! I actually found a mint 8800b in the rafters here at work during a
cleanout. Took it home and added it to my collection. It was used as a PLC to
control a machine with custom I/O cards and ROM around the very late 70's.

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AstroJetson
Very cool, it was fun to play with. Thanks for also including the Altair info,
that was a blast from the past.

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nineteen999
If you're looking for something a little more downloadable, z80pack has
emulation for Altair 8800/Imsai 8080 including front panel emulation:

[https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/z80pack/screenshots/2014.h...](https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/z80pack/screenshots/2014.html)

Comes with prepackaged CP/M images and can run Alan Cox's amazing FUZIX
system:

[https://github.com/EtchedPixels/FUZIX](https://github.com/EtchedPixels/FUZIX)

[https://hackaday.com/2017/04/16/z80-fuzix-is-like-old-
fashio...](https://hackaday.com/2017/04/16/z80-fuzix-is-like-old-fashioned-
unix/)

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antirez
This makes me put my ZX Spectrum in the right perspective.

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tempodox
The Z80 is a science fiction luxury space ship when compared to the 8080.

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DonHopkins
The Z80's nice, but I always thought of the 6809 as the Chrysler Cordoba of 8
bit microprocessors, with soft Corinthian Leather upholstery and a luxurious
automatic multiply instruction.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsg97bxuJnc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vsg97bxuJnc)

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DonHopkins
Shouldn't it get confused when you turn it on and off really fast again and
again?

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mywittyname
What did people use these for in real life? Were they essentially toys or were
there peripherals that made them useful for solving problems?

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jackhack
That's a bit like asking what did carpenters did with hammers and hand-saws in
this age of CAD/CAM. :)

I assure you the Altairs were quite useful. Mostly, owners enjoyed the luxury
of working on their very own computer, rather than a time-share machine's
account from the corporation or university.

It's difficult to communicate how this felt, in this age of ubiquitous
computing. A machine that one could reboot whenever you wanted. Tinker.
Explore. They wrote games. Controlled hardware. Learned what made a computer
tick. Connect a modem and talk to others. Sure, it was primitive, but at the
time it felt as cutting-edge as space travel.

If I recall correctly, the Altair ran CP/M, and could run the early Zork
infocom text adventure series.

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mywittyname
I guess the basic model was so lacking in features that I found it hard to
understand how people would make use of it. So it's more like asking how
people actually used old steam cars after watching a video of Jay Leno
spending hours prepping his and learning they could only drive 15 miles
between fill-ups.

I did some research after posting that and realized that you could get
teletype terminals for them. This makes it much easier to see what people did.
I originally thought that most people punched op-codes into that front panel,
which seems like an awful lot of work for not much reward.

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unimpressive
Video of someone loading BASIC with a teletype:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv5b1Xowxdk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv5b1Xowxdk)

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fuball63
This is really well executed. I had a project like this on my idea list,
although for the Raspberry Pi.

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azhenley
This makes me want to go code a 8080 emulator.

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waimate01
That simulator has an 8080 emulator built-in. It's fully functional.

