{"id":62,"date":"2014-09-24T21:48:27","date_gmt":"2014-09-25T01:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/?page_id=62"},"modified":"2014-09-24T21:50:43","modified_gmt":"2014-09-25T01:50:43","slug":"altair-8800","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wordpress\/hands-on-museum\/altair-8800\/","title":{"rendered":"Altair 8800 Emulation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Emulation of the Altair 8800 is not very common. While there are resources to try out the Altair, virtually, most of it is done through &#8220;simulation.&#8221; This means that the Altair emulator is not designed to perform exactly like the original system. It is only designed to simulate its operation, giving you a taste of what it was like to use one.<\/p>\n<h2>SIMH<\/h2>\n<p>One of the available emulators is called SIMH. This emulator is nothing more than a collection of vintage system emulators that run in their own DOS-like window. The Altair 8800 is represented as an original system with the Intel 8080 microprocessor and also as an Altair 8800 with a Z-80 microprocessor in place. The latter allows for CP\/M operation. One thing you won&#8217;t get from the SIMH emulator is the familiar front panel switches. Instead, the emulator will run like it had a video terminal and keyboard connected to it.<\/p>\n<p>However, there are specific system emulators from the SIMH project that have been individually separated for your convenience. You can find a version of the Z-80 based Altair at this page: <a href=\"http:\/\/classiccmp.org\/cpmarchives\/cpm\/mirrors\/www.schorn.ch\/cpm\/intro.php\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/classiccmp.org\/cpmarchives\/cpm\/mirrors\/www.schorn.ch\/cpm\/intro.php<\/a><\/p>\n<p>To make SIMH work, you will need to download the appropriate simulator ZIP file (found in their own appropriately labeled section) and extract it to a folder of your choice on your computer. Next, download the <strong><em>CP\/M 2.2<\/em><\/strong> ZIP file and extract it into the folder you put the SIMH files in.<\/p>\n<p>When you&#8217;re finished, you should have a folder that has the following files (names may look different for OSX and in Linux)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>altairz80.exe<\/li>\n<li>altairz80_doc.pdf<\/li>\n<li>app.dsk<\/li>\n<li>appleiicpm.dsk<\/li>\n<li>cpm2<\/li>\n<li>cpm2.dsk<\/li>\n<li>i.dsk<\/li>\n<li>simh_doc.pdf<\/li>\n<li>sim_faq.pdf<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Notice something interesting in that list&#8230; the <em>appleiicpm.dsk<\/em>, right? As David mentioned in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/podcast-episode-2-altair-8800-and-kaypro\/\" target=\"_blank\">Show 2<\/a> of the History of Personal Computing podcast, CP\/M is really just CP\/M, no matter what CP\/M capable machine it is running on. So it&#8217;s quite possible that the Apple II copy of CP\/M will work just fine in this emulator.<\/p>\n<p>To start the SIMH Altair emulator, just run the altairz80.exe file. You should get a window that looks similar to this:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_63\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-63\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Altair-SIMH.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-63\" src=\"http:\/\/www.historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Altair-SIMH-300x151.png\" alt=\"Altair SIMH Window\" width=\"300\" height=\"151\" srcset=\"http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Altair-SIMH-300x151.png 300w, http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Altair-SIMH-200x101.png 200w, http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Altair-SIMH.png 677w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-63\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Altair SIMH Window<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>This it like a control shell for the emulator. You aren&#8217;t running CP\/M at this screen. You must boot the CP\/M disk by typing the following line at the emulator prompt:<\/p>\n<p><strong>do cpm2<\/strong> &lt;press Enter&gt;<\/p>\n<p>You should now be running CP\/M Version 2.2. Go ahead and try it out. To see a directory listing, type:<\/p>\n<p><strong>dir<\/strong> &lt;press Enter&gt;<\/p>\n<p>You should now see a screen full of CP\/M files<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_64\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-64\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Altair-SIMH-CPM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-64\" src=\"http:\/\/www.historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Altair-SIMH-CPM-300x151.png\" alt=\"Altair SIMH running CP\/M\" width=\"300\" height=\"151\" srcset=\"http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Altair-SIMH-CPM-300x151.png 300w, http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Altair-SIMH-CPM-200x101.png 200w, http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Altair-SIMH-CPM.png 677w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-64\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Altair SIMH running CP\/M<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Want to play around with a classic interactive text program from back in the day? While you are in this emulator running CP\/M, you can talk to a therapist named Eliza by typing:<\/p>\n<p><strong>mbasic eliza<\/strong> &lt;press Enter&gt;<\/p>\n<p>Have FUN! \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Emulation of the Altair 8800 is not very common. While there are resources to try out the Altair, virtually, most of it is done through &#8220;simulation.&#8221; This means that the Altair emulator is not designed to perform exactly like the original system. It is only designed to simulate its operation, giving you a taste of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":53,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67,"href":"http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/62\/revisions\/67"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/historyofpersonalcomputing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}