deramp5113

I work mainly with pre-PC computers from the mid to late 70’s. This is an era where 8” floppy drives were very common. The 5.25” HD drives work great as a drop-in replacement for 8” drives with a simple 50 to 34 pin passive adapter. While not quite as authentic an experience as with the 8” drives, they are much smaller, lighter, have simpler power requirements, are less expensive, and are easier to find then the big 8” drives. Mike

That’s awesome! MiniFLEX was basically lost until a hobbyist in Belgium contacted me a few months ago with original disks that he was attempting to archive. He had tried with ImageDisk, CryoFlux, etc., but was never able to then create a disk that actually booted from the disk images he captured. You’ll find this is true of most every MiniFLEX disk image you might find on the Internet - the image is actually corrupt. The problem is that TSC and SWTPC used a disk layout with just a two byte post index gap. This gap is too short for the disk controller ICs in most PCs to be able to read the first physical sector after the index hole. The original controller IC used in the SWTPC 6800 worked (the FD1771), but PCs cannot not properly read the disks. I wrote utilities to archive and restore the disks using the actual SWTPC 6800 and an XMODEM serial link to a PC. I would love to archive your disks for the community. I’m in the Dallas, Texas area. You can reach me for details using deramp5113 followed by ASCII 0x40 then the yahoo domain name. Mike

Hello, I’m waking up this old thread in case you still have these disks. I recently restored a SWTPC 6800 and have MiniFLEX running on it. As part of this, I created utilities for archiving and restoring MiniFLEX disks to/from a PC. See https://deramp.com/downloads/swtpc/software/FLEX/FLEX 1.0 (MiniFLEX) If you still have the disks, I’d like to archive them for the 6800/FLEX community. There are very few MiniFLEX disks archived and these would be a great addition. Thanks! Mike D.

The Clone properly runs the programs that caused the original Altair to play "music," but unfortunately, since the Clone does not emit unintended radiation in the AM band, you won't hear any music on your radio! Mike

I've spent the last nine months having a blast making this computer. Take a look at http://AltairClone.com Comments and criticisms welcome! Mike

I just bought the same "boat anchor" off eBay. Dirty and old, but it looks like it's all original and in very good shape other than dirt. Going to work on bringing it up soon. Wish I had the terminal that went with it like you found. Sounds like you got a great deal! Mike

Did you pick up the computer and the "mindless terminal," or is it just the terminal?