Hi All;
Micro, no not necessarily, Altair got DC Drives at first, and possibly later, Pertec Sent them what ever they had, either DC or AC, Also the DC types, They had trouble with, and that May have been Why they later Switched to AC.. or Since Altair was ordering So Many, they Shipped whatever they had in Stock.. Can't say for sure.. Both the Altair and the Imsai were relatively Simple machines.. I'm supprised You had trouble with Both.. Especially considering you name -- MicrocomputerSolutions..
THANK YOU Marty
To tell you the truth, I never worked that hard at getting those two working.
I built my SD Systems board set (SBC200, ExpandoramII, and VersafloppyII) from kits, installed the S-100 connectors in a Integrand Research System 800 Series System Enclosure, and install the active termination, scratch built a power supply to run 5.25" and 8" floppies without having any serious problems.
My first decent working terminal was a Heathkit H-19 (that I had to wait in line for months to get). I refused to buy a Heathkit H-9 terminal after seeing what my brother went through to get his working with his H-8. The only good thing I could say about the H-9 terminal is that later on, I found out that Heath used the same 12" crt in the CO-2600 Engine Analyzer/Scope that I bought and built later when I worked briefly at the Heathkit Store in LA as the Assistant Manager. As a side story, what most people don't know is that by 1981, Zenith had already decided to close the Heathkit Stores, even as they were following an earlier plan and still opening new stores in 1982. They hired me at the end of 1981 recruiting me away from Radio Shack where I was a Store Manager, promising me my own Heathkit Store due to new store openings by the end of 1982, knowing full well they would start closing stores in 1983.
I moved on to Compupro boards, and complete systems, buying some boards from Priority One Electronics, and most of the rest at the Computer Swapmeet (late 1970s and early 1980s) that used to be held at the San Jose Fairgrounds (where I met Bill Godbout and George Morrow for the first time).
After buying a few Compupro boards, I didn't see any reason to mess with the older, lower performance, harder to integrate stuff, and as a result, got rid of the Altair and the IMSAI. Before that, I made several trips to the Bay Area to try to find IMSAI replacement parts, and wandered into WW Component Supply and met the Fulcrum Computer people.
