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Altair 8800b Mainframe
Meticulous engineering and careful planning have resulted in theAltair 8800b, the pacesetter in microcomputer development.
With the vast amount of memory, interface, and process control boards available for the 8800b, expansion capabilities remain unsurpassed.
System flexibility is further enhanced by the potential for many interface possibilities including floppy disk systems, CAT's, line printers, teletypes, paper tape readers, video displays and custom applications control.
The Altair 8800b computer is a general purpose byte-oriented machine with 78 basic machine language instructions. It supports up to 64K of directly addressable memory and can address 256 separate input and output devices.
A heavy duty power supply permits full load (up to 18 plug-in units) operation. The three power lines include an unregulated 8 volt, 18 ampere supply and pre-regulated positive and negative 18 volt, 2 ampere supplies. A multiple tapped primary transformer provides for 110/220 volt and 50/60 Hz operations.
The Display/Control Board features a programmable read only memory (PROM) which contains the program operations for examine, examine next, deposit, deposit next and accumulator functions. The PROM eliminates the need forsingle-shot control of those functions.
The D/C Interface Board buffers all signals and aids in the isolation between the display/control board and the bus.
Data operations are controlled by the Intel 8080A CPU chip. An on-board crystal controlJed clock generates the 2 MHZ operating frequency and utilizes the Intel 8224 clock generator.
Display/Control Board to Display/Control Interface wiring is accomplished by the use of plug-in ribbon cables making these connections more sturdy and less subject to breakage.
All 8800 software and plug-in units are fuliy compatible with the 8800b (with the exception of the 8800a CPU board).
Specifications
| Number of Boards | Up to 18 |
|
Microprocessor |
|
| Model | 8080A |
| Technology | NMOS |
| Data Word Size, Bits | 8 |
| Clock Frequency | 2M Hz |
|
Add Time, Register to Register, Microsec. per data word |
2 |
| Number of Instructions | 78 |
|
Input/Output Control |
|
| I/0 Word Size, Bits | 8 |
| Number of I/0 Channels | 256 |
| Direct Memory Access | Optional |
| Interrupt Capability | Std. |
| Vectored Interrupt (8 priority levels) | Optional |
|
Software |
|
| Resident Assembler | Yes |
| Higher-Ievel Language | BASIC |
| Monitor or Executive | System Monitor; text editor |
Complete Software Library (Separately Priced) |
Yes |
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