I'm not sure the Beehive terminal is the best-supported one available, but
if you've any hope of getting your Altair running with "period" hardware,
i.e. with hardware available in the era in which the box was designed, I'd
say you're going to need one. Video boards for the S-100 were not common
until much later, with the possible exception of the SSM VB1, which does not
provide a standard 80x24 display.
If this terminal is really unused, it might be worth going through and
swapping the electrolytic caps with some relatively new ones, but it
probably would work well otherwise. 20-year old electrolytics need to be
"re-formed" if they're to work reliably. That involves removing them from
the circuit and gradually cycling them up to peak voltage and current. If
you have to remove them, it makes more sense to replace them rather than to
go through the re-forming process. Some of them may die anyway, due to
tired dielectric.
A TVI 910 or a Lear-Siegler ADM-3A might be a more widely supported choice.
I used either a TVI or a Hazeltine Esprit emulating a Hazeltine 1500 most of
the time. I didn't start using this S-100 stuff until 1977, however.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: Joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Friday, May 19, 2000 7:49 AM
Subject: Re: rescued a beehive!
> Tony,
>
> At 01:24 AM 5/19/00 +0100, you wrote:
> >>
> >> Yesterday I picked up one of my more unusual finds, a Beehive MicroB
> >> terminal that looks like it's new in the box. See pictures at
> >> "http://www.intellistar.net/~rigdonj/beehive/b4.jpg" through
> >> "http://www.intellistar.net/~rigdonj/beehive/b9.jpg". You can see in
> >> picture b7 that it was still sealed up in a plastic bag inside the box.
> >>
> >> Does anyone want this? I don't need it and I don't have room to
keep
> >> it. I powered it up today and it appears to work. You can see in the
last
> >> picture that it does have a raster and cursor. I don't have a systemn
that
> >> uses a terminal so I can't test it beyond that. The screen is normal
but
> >
> >Don't you still have that 11/73 you were asking about last week. That
> >could use this as a terminal, surely.
>
> Yes, but it's over at someone else house at the moment.
> >
> >And are you saying that you don't have _any_ other machine with an RS232
> >port? Surely you have _something_ that can send and receive characters?
>
> Of course I do. I can alway use the over abundant PCs. But I don't want
> to take the time to figure out the port pinouts and make a cable.
>
> >
> >And 95% of all terminals only need the data leads on the RS232 connector
> >(there may be a setup option for this). In which case shorting pin 2 to
> >pin 3 on the RS232 connector will do a loopback test --
>
> I thought about that but I ran out of time and had to put it away for
> the evening. Wouldn't you have to jumper the handshaking signals too? I
> don't know which of them this terminal requires. I didn't get a manual for
> it. :-(
>
>
>
> anything you type
> >on the keyboard should appear on the screen. That doesn't test
> >_everything_ (for example the baud rate could be wildly off, but if it
> >uses the same rate for Tx and Rx, this test would pass), but it will
> >check much of the terminal logic.
>
> Joe
>
Received on Fri May 19 2000 - 08:29:02 BST
