Source: https://www.autometer.de/

Are you as envious of those people who own an actual working Altair 8800 or an IMSAI 8080? 

These machines, which can be called the first personal computers, but whose output was based only on a few blinkenlights and had to be programmed via front panel switches, were real gamechangers at their time.

And even though it is possible to reconstruct these machines with hardware parts available today, that is quite an undertaking. And needs soldering skills. And plenty of time.

Udo Munk to the rescue. His emulator package dubbed z80pack is a goldmine. Besides emulators for the two machines mentioned above, you find emulators for the Cromemco Z1, CP/M and generic Z80 and 8080 emulations.

All programs are written in ANSI C, the front panels are implemented in C++. So every POSIX compatible system should be able to compile and run these goodies.

Feel like switching some … switches? Give it a try.