The Altos 68000

Created early 1999. Last updated Tue Aug 13 22:39:11 CDT 2002

This was the Altos, its accompanying tape drive, pair of terminals (note the Wyse), and its external 80M drive. New bad scan of Altos

The configuration of the upper image isn't quite correct. The cpu/boards is the box on top of the other, identical box. The incorrect thing is that the Altos should be open. That's right, one was supposed to run the Altos with the lid open, fixed so it was vertical. This machine was built in '81 or '82 and would tend to heat the corner of the basement.

It was a monster. A bit larger than a decent-size flatbed scanner. It had what I recall was a 40M drive and ran Unix System III, which I was told was a port of Xenix. 12 bits, straight K&R. Getting cnews to run on it was an achievement.

Newer
bad scan of Altos

At one point, I had a cron job do a backup to tape on Sunday mornings. The damn thing made so much noise, it woke me up.

The external 80M drive would die and have to be revived every few months or so. Probably more often.

Later, I bought a Z100 -- remember those? -- and used that as a terminal. It worked extremely well.

The Altos was awful. But I learned a lot while keeping it up and running and keeping its customers happy. Well, content.


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