Altair Owners ...

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Wed Jan 3 10:38:52 2001

Has anybody got an ALTAIR that actually runs CP/M?

I have one OS for an Altair, namely a system with the MITS serial board an a
Morrow DJ2. Not being an Altair-owner myself, I don't know how, exactly to
prepare a BIOS for the two Altair add-ons I'm building up for eventual
liquidation on eBay.

I've got two genuine MITS boxes, one intended (but never used as such) FDD
box, with a front face plate I made in the shop, which houses a PSU, and
offers four HH 5-1/4" drive bays, with a dual 50-conductor cable hookup in
the back, the latter hookup being of my own design an the opening for it
having been milled by me. The box is original, but there's no
identification of any sort, since this was from a batch of raw boxes I
bought when MITS went tits-up. The other, essentially identical box is a
MITS HDC box, with the original cardcage and PSU (repaired) but no back
cover, which once covered the card cage opening from the rear, and,
consistent with the original MITS accommodated a parallel interface to the
Altair computer. It is completely original and has no modifications to the
box, which still bears the original dress panel and key-switch, but the box
houses a WD-1002-05 bridge controller, capable of handling 4 floppies
(albeit 5-1/4" and 3-1/2" only, due to the supported clock rate). This box
is intended to be used in tandem with the COMPLETELY COUNTERFEIT drive
enclosure mentioned above, though it's being done in a period-authentic way.

What I want to know is what sort of support for floppy diskettes will be
require, if any, based on the fact there will only be 5-1/4" drives
accomodated in the system. Has anybody got a "better" sort of BIOS setup
for booting from the WDFDC? I'm looking to clone something, so the eventual
owner will be able to build and use a boot diskette from something else,
prefereably something that already exists, yet the only running Altair boxes
I've seen/heard-of myself use the hard-sectored mini-floppies of the
Northstar, and that's not an option.

Any suggestions?

Dick
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 10:38:52 GMT