I Got IMSAI 8080 and CompuPro 1970s S-100 Computers!

I had an unbelievable opportunity to pick up some dream tier computers that I'm excited to introduce here! But I've been down this road before, so this time I also want to focus on exactly what my next steps are to get these running and how I'm making progress on that.

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[kvms]

Your a young guy and I started in this IT industry in my 2nd year of high school. I was at a Company call Datapoint(look it up they installed the first network in Las Vegas around 1978) with Apple during the Apple II, Apple IIe, Apple III, LISA, and the 1st MAC(I edited the book on the MAC) was at DEC(DIgital Equipment Corp) which was purchased by Compaq, and IBM.
I lived what your are looking at as history. I am/was a programmer, engineer, storage engineer, network engineer, software engineer, and application programmer. I did hardware and software.
I am now on my 2nd career working on guitars, banjos, ukuleles, and amp repair. Much less stress and no corp bull.

Have fun

Ricky from IBM, Ret

[TanyaCumpston]

Nostalgia time. I used to own an IMSAI 8080 when I was younger (I'm 69 now). I remember my first program was written in 8080 assembly language and hand translated into binary before entering it using the paddle switches.
That was the start of a long career in embedded software. Fun times.

[byteram]

I can tell you immediately the CP/M 2.2 System Alteration Guide is not online, just the 2.0 guide. What a haul!

[UsagiElectric]

Ooh man, I am ridiculous hyped for these!

[lasskinn]

recently I've been binging the channel "tech time traveler". fits right into this kinda stuff.

[WalnutSpice]

2:27 always good to see my main display still making cameos, I see ya down there PS3 3D TV

[douro]

The Compupro 8/16 was known for having a tremendous amount of CPU options- 8085, Z80, 8088, 8086, 80286, 32016 and 68k were all available CPU options. It could even be equipped with more than one processor.

[mortarmopp]

The 8080 was my favorite S100 system, and the best looking. I can see why it was used in the movie, War Games.

[theking]

With the Televideo, and the IMSAI, you have the two most iconic machines out of Wargames

[bigjnsa]

IMSAI directly from the movie War Games.. awesome find dude!

[Jigglenomicon]

Woa... it seems like a monstrous task to preserve all these discs and documentation.
Im sure you are totally up for it, altho i hope you dont get burned out by it.

[unitedco]

CuriousMarc recently showed a scanner thats PERFECT for these manuals, check his recent videos. That scanner does much to get perfect scans of old manuals

[lelandclayton]

Take it from a EE that has restored vintage guitar amps to arcade machines. Do not and I repeat do not bother with reforming capacitors. Most likely end up with a high ESR, if they're electrolytic they can start leaking electrolyte that can rein havoc on the PCB and other parts. When they totally die they short out in turn can harm everything else. By all means don't listen like a bunch of people attend to ignore these wise words and when it happens just hear in your mind "I told you so".

[TheDoctorhuw]

Just love your enthusiasm, you remind me of me 35 years ago. I enjoy the way you enpart knowledge. I'm 60 and have been fixing electronic equipment all of my working life, mostly Analogue & digital audio & video equipment but lots of computers & their peripherals too, I guess i'm a little jaded now but you have given me new energy. Thank you, and best of luck.

[Agamemnon]

I had to burst into laughter when you demonstrated the disk drive latching mechanism and an entire dust cloud seemed to puff out. Those are some dirty drives :D

[tx]

What a gold mine! So glad you are dedicated to preservation of documentation as well. Great video.

[VorpalGun]

CuriousMarc did a video recently on a scanner thing that can scan books with spines. It corrects by projecting a light pattern to detect the shape of the book.

[fantummenelkinstruments]

Those are 8" drives!! Holy table tablets, Batman!😄

[MrCommodorebob]

Welcome to the IMSIA 8080 owners club! I've had my Imsia 8080 for a little over a year new and have been able to run CP/M and a good many pieces of software on it like Nevada FORTRAN, some games etc using my VT320 (Soon I have have my Teletype ready to go as well). Some of the software that you will uncover will be unreal and I can't wait to see what you will recover. Hell, once you do I'll probably use some on my machine. It does look like those cards are just shoved in there on the IMSIA 8080, as those would have to be 8K or 4K cards for all of those to be addressable. Plus those early static RAM cards would suck down a ton of power and make ALOT of heat. I have only a 32K and a 16K card on my 8080 for that reason. For the 8-Inch drives I use the FDADAP and a kryoflux to write / read software (however I do have a greaseweasle now). However the more interesting one for me is the Compupro and the SUPER RARE hard drives. The S100 x86 systems have always been interesting to me and they just seem so strange with the software they run and there is not alot out there about them. On the point of the hard drives... if you could get those working you would have the only S100 system with working hard disks that I know of. I don't even know whats more exiting, the Data General, or the Compupro with all of that software.

[jaut-]

Tech time traveler would be able to help you out with identifying the s100 cards as I think they have a few systems that use them. Also if you want to know about the imsai 8080 the imsai guy would be able to help you out with resurrecting the system as they did the same and made a series on YouTube.
On the topic of the unbuilt cards they may not be the rarest or the most useful but are definitely cool and probably should be placed on a shelf with pride of place showing them off, definitely unbuilt.