alt.hn

5/13/2026 at 3:52:00 PM

S-100 Virtual Workbench

 https://grantmestrength.github.io/S100/

by rbanffy

5/13/2026 at 8:39:19 PM

I remember reading Byte Magazine when I was 7 and not understanding why I couldn’t plug one of those cool S-100 bus graphics cards into my Heathkit H89.

So I made space invaders out of box drawing characters.

BASIC was slow so I tried using C. (Yes, there was a minimal C compiler for the H89!) But then C was too fast and “for (i=0; i<10000; i++);” didn’t seem to slow things down like it did in BASIC so then I was stumped. “C is too fast for games!” — me

The H89 had a built-in monitor and a 5 1/4” floppy drive. Its precursor, the H8, was much like this emulated S100/Altair, with LEDs and switches as your only I/O.

by dmbaggett

5/13/2026 at 8:59:32 PM

You could put a terminal on an H8 and not have to use the hexpad. Lot's of people built one from the TV Typewriter Cookbook by Don Lancaster (or one of the similar designs floating around then). Knew several folks with that setup.

by kjs3

5/13/2026 at 9:14:59 PM

WUT, I had no idea. That’s cool!

by dmbaggett

5/13/2026 at 9:23:29 PM

It wasn't hugely useful unless you also bought/built some sort of mass storage. Fortunately, Heathkit sold a paper tape reader! And a cassette tape interface! And something new and expensive called a 'floppy disk', but who could ever use that much storage?

by kjs3

5/14/2026 at 4:41:40 AM

In the same era (age 7-12) I went to school on an airbase in Germany and at some point “they” (no idea who) decided I should not do normal math, but should instead spend time with the Airmen who ran the computers. They had an Interdata-something-16 minicomputer which had both punched tape and teletype I/O. I played Oregon Trail on the teletype and always died of dysintery. I once asked the wise and aged Airman (he was probably 25), “can I punch my own holes in the tape and make the computer do cool things?” To which he responded “Yes. No.”

by dmbaggett

5/14/2026 at 3:31:56 AM

You could attach an H-19 to an H-8 and play advent on H-DOS.

The first computer I ever used. I was so young I didn't know how to spell "bird."

Hard sectored drives!

by foobiekr

5/14/2026 at 4:31:53 AM

I had “Microsoft Adventure” on the H89, which I played for a million hours and was why I dug up the original (probably not really; it’s complicated) Don Ekman Colossal Cave FORTRAN code and ported to TADS, which then led to Graham Nelson’s Inform port.

by dmbaggett

5/13/2026 at 4:08:56 PM

Wonderful! :-)

Was going to comment that this reminded me of the old S-100 bus, and looking at the ads in Byte, and reading Chaos Manor, but obviously that couldn't be it, it had to be something else entirely, clicked and was pleasantly surprised.

by mpweiher

5/13/2026 at 4:24:55 PM

It has IMSAI-8080!

You don't get the satisfying tactile flick-click of the real thing, but still, for about 0.06% of us, this brings an enormous smile!

:)

by MarkusQ

5/13/2026 at 6:10:02 PM

I have a cassette copy of Microsoft Advanced Basic for the SOL-20 that I got in a box of "junk" (junk in quotes because it included a very rare early copy of Zork for the Apple II that paid for the box about 40x over) at an estate sale years ago. Need to figure out if I can get it to load in this somehow.

by vile_wretch

5/14/2026 at 5:18:32 AM

I have no idea what's going on but it looks really cool

by p0u4a

5/13/2026 at 5:34:42 PM

Heh, not sure why but it makes me wonder if you could 'Ship of Theseus' something like that into a modern day desktop. By going thru the different eras of DIY compute.

by sumtechguy

5/13/2026 at 11:55:16 PM

At some point you have to go from S-100 to original “8-bit” ISA. There might have been a combo backplane in period.

by buescher

5/13/2026 at 10:58:47 PM

Fantastic! Load the Altair Z80. At the CP/M prompt type: 'DIR' to see your files. Try out: 'MBASIC STARTREK' - be patient while it loads and then go save the galaxy! Just like old times :)

by trailbits

5/13/2026 at 5:49:01 PM

Oh my. I've spent waaay too much time trying to figure out how does the Ladder works. Still was unable to play that one.

And I won't even mention that I have no idea how to use ED.

by IFC_LLC

5/13/2026 at 5:26:02 PM

How do I... use this? There's no help button or anything

by NooneAtAll3

5/13/2026 at 6:55:10 PM

That was the very same reaction of many early S-100 computer owners. This emulator has done a good job emulating that.

by nsxwolf

5/13/2026 at 6:20:08 PM

The UI is unreadable due to low contrast and tiny text.

by Narishma

5/13/2026 at 7:44:30 PM

Was the front end designed using Claude Design?

by noncoml

5/13/2026 at 4:42:58 PM

Thanks! Now I will procrastinate the whole day.

by po1nt

5/13/2026 at 4:54:03 PM

Holy crap! When I was a child, my father got me my first computer, and it had a bunch of dongles and red LEDs. I looked at it for a few minutes, and was like, what the hell am I supposed to do with this? My dad was an electrical engineer at a steel plant, so I had assumed it was some sort of industrial automation computer. But no, it was an Altair 8800.

I couldn't figure it out so they just got rid of it. Wish I could go back in time and try again.

by colordrops

5/13/2026 at 6:13:50 PM

Once you got the S100 box too full, you'd send it to my late friend Lloyd Smith's shop, DigiTek, where he would split the power bus, and add a second power supply to handle the load.

by mikewarot

5/13/2026 at 5:05:36 PM

Wish I could read the text but someone decided it was more important to use dark gray text on black and dark-green backgrounds because it looks all trendy and cool and shit.

by CamperBob2