Hi Herb, That may be a loaded question as C & K switches may not have been used on the original Altair Front Panel according to someone I really trust.. According to Mike Douglas (deramp in the Vintage community), who has impressed me with his extensive knowledge of Altair hardware, the American Switch brand was used in the original Altair not C & K. Mike says that the APEM switch part numbers listed below are closest to the original American Switch brand. In fact, APEM purchased American Switch a number of years ago. S1 Toggle Switch On-None-On (Silver) APEM 5236AB S10-S25 Toggle Switch On-None-On (Gold) APEM 5236CDB S2-S9 Toggle Switch (On)-Off-(On) (Gold) APEM 5237CDB Take this as you wish but I do value Mike's opinion on this Best regards, Jeff Galinat On Sun, Apr 12, 2020 at 2:34 PM Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
An odd thing. I was trying to buy some C&K brand "toggle switches" for a MITS Altair 8800 front panel. I could not find on the Web, a good photo of it's front-panel PC board "naked" to see the original switches; so I could buy one of the proper size. Specifically, the length of the "neck" below the toggle lever.
Does anyone have such a photo, of the unmounted PC board with switches, or a photo of of the actual real original switch bodies, or a measure of the physical length of that mounting-shaft? The length does vary.
Just to be clear and exact. I'm talking about the original model of the MITS Altair 8800. NO 8800a, no 8800b. These switches have a narrow round "toggle" - not the flat wedge-like toggle on the 8800b and 8800a. And no, MITS doesn't have a C&K number, and no sketch in their original manuals (that I could find).
I've made a good guess, without disassembling my own 8800. Looks like 11/16 inches from base of threaded shaft to top of same. Looks like a 3/4" net length from the base of the C&K body to the top of the threaded shaft. These are eyeball measures and are not likely what are in the C&K 1975 data sheets; but these provide clues.
Regards, Herb "missed" Johnson