Good news! Altair 8800c serial number 13044 is up and running! I'll have 
to add it to the "Systems I own" list at the top of my gopher hole. Here's 
a list of the boards I have inside it:
- Reproduction MITS Intel 8080 CPU Board (CPU 80 REV-1)
- FDC+ Floppy Disk Controller Board (also the RAM board with 64k of RAM)
- 88-2SIOJP Board (Two serial ports that operate essentially the same as 
the ones on the original MITS 88-2SIO board)
- Music System Board
- Front Panel and Front Panel Interface Boards for the 8800c

A lot of these boards come with some useful ROMS, bootloaders, and monitor 
programs, so I thankfully don't have to flip in *everything*. I can even 
easily load in programs in Intel Hex format (which is just a text file 
with addresses and data in hex). It's a pretty vanilla system (in the 
sense that it's basically the same as Mike Douglas' demo), but it can do 
basically anything you'd have ever wanted to do with an Altair. The only 
minor annoyance I have right now is that I have no cassette interface. 
Apparently the cassette interface that Douglas has done for the Altair 
8800 clone isn't compatible with a 2SIO board (though it would be 
compatible with an SIOB board), and there doesn't seem to be any 
reproduction boards of a compatible interface board right now - even 
though there's some interest on the S100 computers forums. Of course, my 
Altair *is* a real S100 machine, so I could always put in an original 
88-ACR card, but that's assuming I could get my hands on one (and that it 
would be fully working) for a non-astronomical price. S100 cards are 
really rare so I get the high prices, but it's definitely unattainable for 
me.

I'd also like to get and build a 16K static ram card at some point. 
JMPrecision makes them and ships them worldwide, and for me to get and 
build one would probably cost around $100-150 US. It's a bit expensive, 
but it's doable, and I think it'd be a pretty cool little card to have 
instead of just doing all 64K on my floppy disk controller - which feels a 
bit like cheating to me lol. A papertape punch/reader would also be pretty 
cool to get, although I imagine they're expensive and hard to find just 
like the cassette board. I'll have to look though.

This Sunday is the day I've got to head back to Millsaps to begin my final 
semester of college. It's hard to believe four years has just flown by, 
but assuming I end up with some source of money at the end, it'll be a 
huge relief to finally graduate. I've gone through a whole lot of stress 
and hell, but in the past year it's seemed like my mental health's finally 
starting to get a little better (at least, better than it was), and I 
think finally being free of massive and multiple obligations for at least 
a little while will be great. That is, of course, assuming I don't 
struggle finding a source of income - which is a big hope in and of itself 
- but here's hoping lol. Maybe I can write some Altair software and sell 
the disks ;P. Some SDFers would at least pay a little bit of money to hang 
it on their wall lol.

My ding dang internet just decided to go out on me in the middle of 
writing. I thankfully didn't lose too much thanks to Pico's autosave 
feature, but good gosh I hate whenever that happens. Well, before it 
happens again, I'm going to go ahead and sign off for now. Thanks for 
reading everyone! Some Altair videos and pictures will come soon - albeit 
probably sometime next week when I've got everything unpacked (and some 
better lighting for videos lol).

If anyone just by chance wants to send me a white and gold 8080 or an 
S100 cassette card, I can hook you up with my college address ;P lol (but 
I seriously would be delighted with that -- if someone wants to make it 
happen)

Anyway, jebug29 signing off! See y'all later!