[vcf-midatlantic] MITS Altair 8800 C&K switches

Bill Degnan billdegnan at gmail.com
Wed Apr 15 14:20:53 EDT 2020


On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 1:58 PM Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at 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.jpg
>
> 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.


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