Altair 8800c
The "New" Altair

The cabinet shown above is from the Altair 8800 Clone computer. This cabinet was custom designed for the Altair Clone and not intended to house a heavy vintage computer. However, the case works well for the 8800c because it uses light weight switching power supplies and a rigid mother board.

An original Altair 8800 front panel circuit board won't mount properly in the Altair Clone front panel bracket, so you'll need to use the new front panel board set mentioned below.

The most recent run of the cabinet includes pre-drilled holes that line up with holes in the 9-slot motherboard, or with two of the Altair 4-slot motherboards (see below). You will have to measure and drill mounting holes for your chosen power supplies, or if a different motherboard is used.

As of Spring 2024, Chris Davis has taken over production of the Altair 8800 Clone cabinet. Visit this page for more information.

The 7.5v, 10 amp supply used to provide the 8v rail is a MeanWell HRP-75-7.5. The HRP series is one of their more expensive series, but choices are limited when looking for a 7.5v output in an enclosed supply with screw terminals.

The two 15v, 1 amp supplies used to provide the +/-16v rails are MeanWell part number RS-15-15.

In general, you'll want to avoid using dual output supplies because these tend to have surprisingly high minimum current requirements. The minimum load may not be met, especially on the +/-16v rails, depending on the set of boards that is loaded in the computer at any give time.

These MeanWell supplies are readily available from a variety of suppliers including Mouser and Jameco.

The front panel board used is a two board set that is a drop-in equivalent for the original 8800 front panel board and wire harness. This board set eliminates the hassles of the hand wired harness and fits properly in the Altair Clone cabinet.

The 8800c Front Panel board set is sold as bare boards only. It is not a kit with parts nor are the boards available assembled. Contact me (see bottom of this page) to order. The boards are $35 each, $70 for the set.

Additional information about the board set is provided below.

A few hobbyists are providing reproductions or drop-in equivalents of several Altair boards including the CPU board, the 88-2SIO serial board, and the floppy disk controller.

Gary Kaufman has created a reproduction of  the Altair 8800 CPU board and the four-slot motherboard. Visit Gary's website here. You can also reach Gary at gkaufman followed by ASCII 0x40 followed by the-planet followed by ASCII 0x2E org.

The Altair FDC+ floppy disk controller and the 88-2SIOJP dual serial port board shown in the computer are drop-in equivalents for the original Altair floppy controller and the original 88-2SIO board. The 88-2SIOR1 is another 88-2SIO drop-in equivalent. More information about these boards can be found here.

In the UK, visit the JM Precision Components website. They have created reproductions of several Altair boards.

The 9-slot motherboard used in the demonstrated system is available through Todd Goodman as listed on the RetroBrew Computers website. Scroll down the page to the "S-100 Bus Boards" section and look for "Backplane (9 slot, terminated) - V4" in the table. Todd's contact information is at the bottom of the page.

Here is a link to a .pdf illustration of the 9-slot motherboard. Here's a link to the manual for the 9-slot motherboard.

The 9-slot motherboard has provision for both passive and active termination, a reset switch, power status LEDs, component fuses, etc. For operation with the Altair, you'll want to leave the termination and reset switch options un-stuffed. With modern switching power supplies, you can simply wire across the component fuse holes on the motherboard as well. Stuffing the power status LEDs is optional.

You can also consider using replicas of the original four-slot Altair motherboard. As noted above, both Gary Kaufman and JM Precision Components make replicas of the Altair four slot motherboard.