Introduction
iAltair pretends to be a MITS Altair 8800 computer and gives you a glimpse how
old operating systems like CP/M 2 have felt. Please note that due to
some restrictions regarding interpreted code, you will not be able to create
new applications on this platform.
Start Button
Starts the system selected in the list.
Restore Button
Restores the system selected in the list below and starts it. This is
useful in case you have accidentally deleted some important files. Use
the Start or Restore button also in case you see the
message "iAltair terminated".
Keyboard Button
Brings the keyboard to the front so that you can interact with the system. The keyboard disappears when you touch the screen (upper) section of the application.
Info Button
Shows an abbreviated version of this online help. Press the OK button
to return to the main screen.
Supported Systems
- CP/M 2 was a popular operating system. Type
"DIR" to get an overview of the files available. The directory
listing looks better in landscape mode which is also supported.
If you want to run Eliza type at the
A>command promptMBASIC ELIZA
- CP/M 3 was a successor of CP/M 2 supporting banked memory.
- CP/M 86 is CP/M for the 8086 processor.
Control Characters
In case you need to type a control character (e.g. Control-C), type the
bullet character (•) which is in the "#+=" menu
to the right of the Yen symbol (¥) and the screen will be
inverted. The next character typed (e.g. C) will then be interpreted as
the corresponding control character.
Stopping
In case the system does not respond any more you can use either the Start button or the Restore button. Some application programs also terminate when a Control-C character is typed.
More Information
See schorn.ch for more information regarding the SIMH AltairZ80 simulator for other platforms such as Macintosh, Windows, Linux and Zaurus.