On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 1:58 PM Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Bill Degnan provides these photos of various MITS front-panel switches, on his site, including some new ones. Thanks, Bill Degnan, for the effort past and present.
http://vintagecomputer.net/MITS/680/MITS_Altair_round-switch2.jpg
http://vintagecomputer.net/MITS/8800a/MITS_Altair8800a_switchSA0_broken.jpg
https://vintagecomputer.net/MITS/8800a/MITS_Altair8800a_bare-front-panel.jpg
http://vintagecomputer.net/MITS/8800b/MITS_Altair-8800b_DC-BD.JPG
http://vintagecomputer.net/MITS/8800b-t_3/MITS_8800b-t_front-panel-removed.j...
For MITS 680, 8800a, 8800b, 8800b-t. These identify the brand as American and various models. Of those the 680 has the round toggle lever, the others have the flat-triangular toggle. That's pretty good evidence for the 8800's switches which would have the round toggle lever.
I found elsewhere an 8800 naked front-panel photo; but it's head-on and all one can see is the tops of the switches.
Bill says "Herb, I don't really feel like taking apart the front panel ..". I don't blame you, Bill. There's few photos of the MITS front panel PC board front, because every threaded switch usually has a nut. Also it's probably hard-to-fit to put the cover panel back on. The value of a clean front-panel is - what? - hundreds of dollars? Leave it alone, is prudent.
Regards, Herb Johnson
Recent research implies (but I can't prove outright) that American maintained the same switch part number when they made an "improved" flat version of the ST1-1 switch, around 1976, which appears when they stopped making the round versions.