It was a fully functional replica of the IMSAI 8080 and even allowed for real serial connections to other physical hardware. I joined a couple of forums and Facebook groups and long story short, I was told about this really great Arduino-based IMSAI 8080 replica kit from It is running an Arduino-based micro-controller and running an emulator based on the z80pack emulation software. So I set out to determine how realistic this idea was. I think the most I ever paid for any of my existing retro computers was in the ballpark of $150. Even the ones I did pay money for were several orders of magnitude less than these S-100 machines were bringing in. Most of my Apple and Mac restorations have cost me $0, having acquired many of the machines as donations. I wanted to experience these machines and learn from them but I was not ready to spend that kind of money. A tested, working model with disk drives would bring closer to $4000-$6000. The average going price on eBay for a complete IMSAI 8080 was around $1600 USD and that was untested and unrestored. The next thing that I found out about these two mid-70s specimens of computer history was that they were both fairly expensive to purchase in today’s collector’s market. (Not starting a flame war, I know that is debatable.) My research showed me that the Altair was largely considered the first PC or ‘home computer’ while the IMSAI was considered the first PC clone. Now, I had seen the Altair 8800 and the IMSAI 8080 before in many articles, magazines and geek-culture references before, and I had a vague idea of how they worked and even what they were used for. I had been reading about the computers that predated the Apple I, and I found a small series of home computers that had toggle switches on the front panel for inputting data into the computer. Not so far outside of the box that it was not a computer, per se, but at least not an Apple or Mac computer.
Having rescued, restored or otherwise acquired about every type of Apple II and Mac computer that is realistically obtainable (I’m looking at you Apple I), I decided to switch it up a bit and work on something a little outside of the box.
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