[Coco] Altair 680

[Andrew]

A little more information on this machine:

http://www.retrotechnology.com/restore/altair680.html

Apparently it didn't use a bus compatible with the S-100 bus found in 
the 8800, and it wasn't very popular with hobbyists (instead being 
marketed more toward business uses)...etc (read the link above for the 
story I guess).

It's strange (to me) why they decided to go with a completely new 
system, instead of another plug-in processor card for the 8800. As you 
probably know, the 8800 originally used the 8080 processor (on a card of 
course - everything was on a card plugged into a backplane), but a 
popular later upgrade was to jump to the Z-80 (which in the 
retro-vintage market has meant it isn't easy to find an 8080 card - and 
when you do, you might pay through the nose, though I haven't checked).

I don't see why a card sporting a 6800 (or 6809 for that matter!) 
couldn't be made for the S-100 bus on the Altair, but maybe there's a 
good reason why (again, I haven't delved into any specifics). I 
currently own a Z-80 based Altair (still in need of a good restoration); 
along the way I have managed to obtain a bare 6502 card for the S-100 
bus! That said, I don't know if it is compatible with the Altair's S-100 
bus - or if it is meant for some other S-100 bus.

See - the S-100 bus, while supposedly a "standard" - had variants, from 
what I gather. So some cards didn't work with all S-100 bus systems. 
Likely this was all a case of manufacturers of the various S-100 bus 
computers trying to keep their line "their line". Had they stuck to the 
original standard (working around whatever flaws there were, as I am 
sure they existed), things might have went a different direction in the 
industry as a whole, and we wouldn't have needed to wait for things to 
ultimately coalesce around the "IBM PC-compatible" (then again, maybe we 
still would have).


-- 
Andrew L. Ayers
Glendale, Arizona

On 01/30/2016 10:44 PM, coco-request at maltedmedia.com wrote:
> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2016 07:17:34 -0800
> From: Tony Cappellini<cappy2112 at gmail.com>
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts<coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Subject: [Coco] Altair 680
> Message-ID:
> 	<CABRXM4k_ghczmnhBFnNHUhrWyyrfzU-K6+gUM9k2AanOLiTUJw at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> I never knew there was a 6800 version of the Altair, but here it is
> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dPCX49inFLo