MITS Altair 8800a

I documented the MITS Altair 8800a I received in a similar manner to the MITS Altair 8800.

Out of the box, the Altair 8800a looked pretty good. There was some case damage, but the front panel was nearly perfect.

The insides of this machine, much like the 8800, were dirty and rusty, but operable.

Like my 8800, this machine has a 2 card disk subsystem. It's a different version then the one in the other machine, which can be seen on these two cards.

This disk controller card is most significantly different from its sibling in the other Altair machine.

The 8800a EPROM card has two EPROMs mounted. One is the general boot loader (tape and paper tape) while the other is the boot loader for the disk drive. I'm not yet sure if there is still data on the EPROMs.

This machine hosted a multi-user system and probably had several terminals attached at one time. There were 2 SIO-2 serial cards installed.

This machine had 56K of RAM installed. 24K static and 32K dynamic. This is the 16K static card.

There are two of these 16K dynamic RAM cards in this Altair. I'm not sure how well Static and Dynamic RAM get along in the same system. I'll find out in time, I'm sure.

Here are the two Altair disk drives. The one without the label (and without a power switch) belongs to this machine.

The original owner of the Altairs in my collection came across some additional documentation after a move. Included were the manuals for the disk drives, the 8800a and almost all of the S-100 cards supplied with the machines!

(Submitted April 18, 2007 07:52:21 by louis)

im looking for a computer i don't know what it is called. it is the one off Lost the (tv series) it has a monitor. it looks like a apple macintosh it has a motherbord (mainbord). e mail me if you have or know were to get one.

(Submitted March 4, 2007 11:25:26 by Art M)

Hi - I have 6 years experience on eBay, positive feedback around 3000 and a 99.9% satisfaction rating/ I have for auction an Altair 8800A here is the link to the auction http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ViewItem&rd=1&item=230099447018&ssPageName=STRK:ME SE:IT&ih=013

a shorter link is http://tinyurl.com/354ueg

thanks Art

(Submitted March 16, 2006 04:25:31 by Tomas)

I have two Altair 8800A complete with manuals. I also have the dubble 8 inch floppy in and the extended rack. These are possibly for sale.

(Submitted January 21, 2006 21:21:13 by evhwg)

What came in the stock kit of the altair 8800a?

(Submitted August 5, 2005 11:51:58 by Preston)

I am looking for an altair to buy. They have none on ebay, where might I look?

(Submitted April 8, 2005 18:53:46 by grindel)

Tyler you can download an altair emulator. google altair32 and download version 2.5 or older it seems that the version 3 of the emulator works properly.

(Submitted December 2, 2004 06:03:29 by Tyler Cleverley)

Hello my name is tyler cleverley and i am tacking a java class and we are doing a project on the Altair 8800 so if you could send me the information on how to use this computer and what is it supposed to do it would be varry good for me. my e-mail is tyler_cleverley@hotmail.com thank you in advance

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Description
Manufacturer	Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS)
Model	Altair 8800a
Date Announced	Late 1975 or early 1976
Date Canceled	1977 or 1978
Number Produced	Unknown
Country of Origin	USA
Price	Approximately $550 in kit form, Approximately $800 assembled for the basic system.
Current Value	$1,000 - $2,500

Specifications
Processor	Intel 8080a
Speed	2 MHz
RAM	1K to 64K
ROM	Optional. Usually Intel 1702 EPROMs at 256 Bytes each for various bootstrap loaders.
Storage	Optionally: Paper tape, cassette tape, 5.25" or 8" disks.
Expansion	18 slot motherboard. Typically not fully populated with connectors.
Bus	S-100
Video	None
I/O	Optional Serial and Paralell
OS Options	MITS DOS, CP/M, Altair Disk BASIC

Notes	The Altair 8800a was a slight upgrade to the 8800 that was introduced alongside the Altair 8800B. The main change was an upgraded power supply although the new 18 slot motherboard was also significant. Early 8800a models had the short round switches like the 8800, some later models seem to have had the 8800b flat switches instead.

Related Items in Collection	Altair 8" Disk drives with controller cards, ADM-3A terminal, ASR 33 teletype, various software including Altair Disk BASIC, Altair DOS, Fortran, Timeshare BASIC, etc. Manuals for all hardware and software.
Related Items Wanted	Additional software and working disk drives. Interrupt controller, PROM programmer, PROM board.