Anything serious had to be done on a mainframe in the 70's :D like the AutoCAD ancestor, that was a blast, so enourmous, and so expansive per hour in energy cost and maintenance.

Ah! you just demonstrated the next requirement of your enclosure: a front "road bar" system that would look like two side handles of any rack mount module. Just as an enemple: img.canuckaudiomart.com/uploads/large/1061361-pair-new-5-inch-rack-mount-handle-kit-preamp-power-amp-tuner.jpg This way, like you stopped yourself from putting the unit on it's "face" on the table, your buttons will be protected and you'll have the possibility to do put the unit on it's face :D

Visionaries, really - people who could see beyond what it was, to what it could become. Also, don't underestimate the labour saving utility of being able to do simple, but tiresome maths repeatedly and quickly

To be fair. The sheer multi step calculations you can punch in on the front panel itself, makes this brick really useful. Hook it to a serial printer and you could get something not only a code wiz could read. Sure it is tedious to plan a program, but once you had it up and ready it could process a lot of numbers. And once dumb terminals became cheap enough, they had already made 4k Basic (which was made to be used on teletype writers (which acted like a terminal, and ate paper like it was going out of fashion)) But ww2 kinda established how useful a fully functioning computer was, it was just not affordable money or space wise by the private person to own a computer until the Altair shipped. And outside of businesses it really had no use outside of hobbyists playing around the first couple of years (since reading & writing machinecode wasn't a layman's language)

I didn't spot it. Now I'm wondering what it was.

I found an emulator online a long time back that was an infocom emulator - and it came with every infocom title (with the text of the hint books too)! Enchanted. Sorcerer. Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. Zork 1-2-3. I was thrilled. It should still be around and updated, but I ran the emulator on some form of windows computer.

I remember a trs-80 model 1 game where they asked one to put an am radio, tuned to a certain frequency, next to the computer, for audio. LOL!!!

You had a Dragon 32? I remember jealously looking at one of those in the shop window, knowing I would never afford it

@grandadsOtherChannel maybe contact Neil at Retro Man Cave (KZfaq channel) as he's collecting a load of Dragon32 stuff. He also has access to the Swindon computer museum basement which has shelves and shelves of unsorted donations (I've seen it first hand. It's a sight for sure!)

You really need a Comodore 64 ;)

web-adventures.org/cgi-bin/webfrotz?s=ZorkDungeon

@@KrispyKremeIsMaking I actually haven't so thanks!

The weirdest part of this is knowing that the laptop on which I am running the terminal is many times more capable than either the original Altair or this emulator. I'm going to build a physical 'terminal' soon - it won't be authentic, but it might look and feel a bit more appropriate

@@AtomicShrimp I'd guess some smart-watch is more powerfull than this, although i never seen one before. I'm from ex-USSR and as it's near-impossible to source-out transistors to make a board like they used to, that might be the place to look. (If you want authentic components)🙈

If you contact him, he might make one of these to order for you

@@AtomicShrimp Thanks a lot for your reply and your suggestion, I'll give it a try. :)

in 2024 you can still contact "The High Nibble" and get a kit of the IMSAI 8080, which was a clone of the Altair back in the day ! 😀

My first computer was an unexpanded ZX81. My classmates at school didn't believe I had a computer

I wish I still had the ZX81 we had, not actually sure what happened to it. I think my dad took it back to the shop because the Spectrum was coming and he wasnt happy with it, a month or so later he bought me the spectrum for Christmas. Now that I still have and, like you this has made me want to go dig that out and set it up properly!

His inventory does ebb and flow a bit. I originally found him via a sold item search on eBay and I messaged him - he was in the process of making more items to sell