Thanks mate! Yeah I was looking at a few companies that make custom front panels for reasonable prices. I was gonna get the human man to make one out of metal but after buying the steel, primer, paint and printing the labels it works out around the same price to just get one made. Also it would be a lot better than anything that human man could make, I've seen him try to cut a straight line with a grinder and it's not pretty!
@DrBudgieandtheHumanMan haha pretty much. If he was in Australia I'd cut one here on local makerspace laser or cnc for you. I really pleased it worked (first time?)
Thanks for the gesture mate. That's a good idea though, there's makerspaces near me! I'd have to send the human man out into the real world though, he'd probably come back with shoebox full of old baked beans or something. I was super pleased it worked! Yeah, well it almost worked first time, didn't fully work till the human man got rid of the power on reset I tried to add. We did all our failures on the breadboards and although the PCBs look more complicated it's actually just the same circuit (I just added drivers for the LEDs and buffers for the Z80 and RAM). I'll have to make some other cards for it, maybe a serial interface, graphics card, PS/2 keyboard, robotic body?
When the original Mits Altair was made, way back in time, there were big huge and heavy computers. Slow and energy hungry, but even those old computers had some sort of a keyboard, back then it was no problem that every button of the keyboard costed REAL money. The Altair was made with a strange kind of saving money on keys, therefore they used switches, with eight switches, eight bits could be inputted, a keyboard could be emulated with switches. The number of finger movements was ten times as mutch, the time needed to input one character was a multiple of that. The switches were cheap if compared with an alphanumeric key, but is was not efficient. Now in 2024, the switches are still not efficient, it may be nostalgic but it costs more to use ten switches in stead of one Chinese Qwerty keyboard.
Interesting, if I remember correctly, Z80 could run most of the code intended for I8080, am I right? And if so, your computer can run the original Altair code?
Thanks for your comment! That's a good question. I'll start out by saying I'm definitely not an expert, this is just what I understand from looking at the schematics and data sheets. Yeah you are 100% correct, the Z80 can run nearly everything a I8080 can (this post goes through the differences retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/1610/how-did-the-z80-instruction-set-differ-from-the-8080/1612#1612). To answer your second question it's yes and no, the budguter handles the sense switches (A8 - A15) slightly differently to the Altair. In the Altair the sense switches become active when the address pins A8 - A15 are all high, whereas for the budguter the sense switches become active when the address pins A0 - A7 are all high. This is just because the Z80 has I/O built in and the input and output instructions use the first 256 bits of address space (you can can use the whole address bus but you have set a register before calling one of the in or out instructions). But in the Altair the I/O space is handled by a separate chip, an intel 8212 and the designers just decided (well there's probably a reason why, I just don't know what it is) to use the high byte for the sense switches. So that's all basically just a really long winded way of saying, yes so long as the Altair programs don't use the sense switches or the I/O space. But that being said it wouldn't be too difficult to alter an Altair program to run on the budguter, e.g. the chase the bit program. Sorry for the super long explanation hope it makes sense (let me know if it didn't or if I'm wrong anywhere).
Thanks for the comment! Yeah we had tons of footage and I was trying to rush out a video because we hadn't put any out for months. I'll do more talking next time.
Thanks for the comment! It's ok I got the human man the change the two edge connectors this morning and it works again now! I think that human man might of broken them by bashing the cards while he was fitting it all in the case.
This could have been a very interesting video while in the first 4,31 minutes I only heard a cartoon bird talk silly and some soldering. Unfortunately I gave up.
@DrBudgieandtheHumanMan First of all, how you run your channel is absolutely your choice, no judgement here. What I would have loved to see is a tear down of the system. discuss the function of the circuitboard so that the viewer perhaps can build it him/herself. Perhas you do that lateron in the video but I had already given up after 5 minutes of soldering. Again..... This is jst my opinion. Do with this what ever you feel like Though, a remake of the Altair seems like an interesting project.
Well done human man.
Thanks mate. But don't forget about me, the human man is nothing without my guidance.
Idk what's going on but great work 😂
Thanks mate. I don't think the human man knows what's going on either haha
That’s my jam
Thanks mate. Glad you like it!
Excellent! Time to laser cut a front panel?
Thanks mate! Yeah I was looking at a few companies that make custom front panels for reasonable prices. I was gonna get the human man to make one out of metal but after buying the steel, primer, paint and printing the labels it works out around the same price to just get one made. Also it would be a lot better than anything that human man could make, I've seen him try to cut a straight line with a grinder and it's not pretty!
@DrBudgieandtheHumanMan haha pretty much. If he was in Australia I'd cut one here on local makerspace laser or cnc for you.
I really pleased it worked (first time?)
Thanks for the gesture mate. That's a good idea though, there's makerspaces near me! I'd have to send the human man out into the real world though, he'd probably come back with shoebox full of old baked beans or something.
I was super pleased it worked! Yeah, well it almost worked first time, didn't fully work till the human man got rid of the power on reset I tried to add. We did all our failures on the breadboards and although the PCBs look more complicated it's actually just the same circuit (I just added drivers for the LEDs and buffers for the Z80 and RAM).
I'll have to make some other cards for it, maybe a serial interface, graphics card, PS/2 keyboard, robotic body?
1:00 ваш автомобильный телефон прикольный это кстати mobira talkman vodafon vt1 1985 год, у него стандарт ETACS
When the original Mits Altair was made, way back in time, there were big huge and heavy computers. Slow and energy hungry, but even those old computers had some sort of a keyboard, back then it was no problem that every button of the keyboard costed REAL money.
The Altair was made with a strange kind of saving money on keys, therefore they used switches, with eight switches, eight bits could be inputted, a keyboard could be emulated with switches. The number of finger movements was ten times as mutch, the time needed to input one character was a multiple of that. The switches were cheap if compared with an alphanumeric key, but is was not efficient.
Now in 2024, the switches are still not efficient, it may be nostalgic but it costs more to use ten switches in stead of one Chinese Qwerty keyboard.
Copyright-free corridos? I am intrigued.
Thanks for the comment! Yeah they were all on the TH-cam audio library.
Interesting, if I remember correctly, Z80 could run most of the code intended for I8080, am I right? And if so, your computer can run the original Altair code?
Thanks for your comment! That's a good question.
I'll start out by saying I'm definitely not an expert, this is just what I understand from looking at the schematics and data sheets. Yeah you are 100% correct, the Z80 can run nearly everything a I8080 can (this post goes through the differences retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/1610/how-did-the-z80-instruction-set-differ-from-the-8080/1612#1612).
To answer your second question it's yes and no, the budguter handles the sense switches (A8 - A15) slightly differently to the Altair. In the Altair the sense switches become active when the address pins A8 - A15 are all high, whereas for the budguter the sense switches become active when the address pins A0 - A7 are all high. This is just because the Z80 has I/O built in and the input and output instructions use the first 256 bits of address space (you can can use the whole address bus but you have set a register before calling one of the in or out instructions). But in the Altair the I/O space is handled by a separate chip, an intel 8212 and the designers just decided (well there's probably a reason why, I just don't know what it is) to use the high byte for the sense switches.
So that's all basically just a really long winded way of saying, yes so long as the Altair programs don't use the sense switches or the I/O space. But that being said it wouldn't be too difficult to alter an Altair program to run on the budguter, e.g. the chase the bit program.
Sorry for the super long explanation hope it makes sense (let me know if it didn't or if I'm wrong anywhere).
@DrBudgieandtheHumanMan Thanks for your reply.
too much music, my friend!
Thanks for the comment! Yeah we had tons of footage and I was trying to rush out a video because we hadn't put any out for months. I'll do more talking next time.
Broke it? That's not soldierin'.
Thanks for the comment! It's ok I got the human man the change the two edge connectors this morning and it works again now! I think that human man might of broken them by bashing the cards while he was fitting it all in the case.
@DrBudgieandtheHumanMan autocorrect got me. It was supposed to be a solder pun on Sharpe lol "That's not solderin"
This could have been a very interesting video while in the first 4,31 minutes I only heard a cartoon bird talk silly and some soldering.
Unfortunately I gave up.
Thanks for your comment. I'm always one for constructive criticism, so what could me and the human man change to improve your viewing experience?
@DrBudgieandtheHumanMan First of all, how you run your channel is absolutely your choice, no judgement here.
What I would have loved to see is a tear down of the system. discuss the function of the circuitboard so that the viewer perhaps can build it him/herself.
Perhas you do that lateron in the video but I had already given up after 5 minutes of soldering.
Again..... This is jst my opinion.
Do with this what ever you feel like
Though, a remake of the Altair seems like an interesting project.