Not quite as rare, and certainly nothing like this, but several years ago I picked up an Altair from a local electronics junk yard.

Crazy thing was, I must have walked by where it was stored hundreds of times over the years since I first started to go to this place back in 1991 (Apache Reclamation and Electronics, here in Phoenix). Apparently it was kept in a trailer that was outside. I never saw the Altair in there, but it was stuffed full of junk and hard to "wander" around inside (the few times I went in, I was lucky not to be bit or stung by any number of things, to be honest).

So one day I was out in the yard wandering around; I turned around - and saw it sitting on a chair (I must have walked right past it). I walked over to it, thinking "No way - just, no way" - but yes, there it was. Very dirty, missing it's top cover, but otherwise all there with a ton of peripheral cards slotted in place.

I went over to one of the owners of the place; he was up on a forklift - I pointed over at it, and said "I'll give you $100 for that thing over there". Yeah, I knew what it was worth, but this same guy had sold me 100 meters of multimodal fiber cable for the cost of copper, back when that stuff ran you 25 dollars a foot - so I thought "maybe he has no clue what it is".

He looked, turned to me and said "Nope - can't do that. Some guy a week ago pulled it out of that trailer there and told me it was an antique. Can't go any lower than $250.00". I dropped my smile, hemmed and hawed, grumbled a bit - you know, put on a show. Then I looked up, and said "Danny (that's his name) - you drive a hard bargain, but that's a deal."

15 minutes later I had it in the back of my pickup and was driving home as quick as I could before anyone changed their minds. A sale's a sale! I went back the next week, dug around some more, and came up with a ton of S-100 bus cards - and got those for nothing as well. Every now and then I go back and look for other cards, but other than a stash of NOS S-100 edge connectors - I couldn't find anything else.

I later went online on to an Altair message group, posted what I had, and was told mine was rather unique, as mine had flat handle toggles, and the later versions all used round handled toggles. I was offered close to a grand for it in as-is sight unseen condition, but I turned it down. My ultimate goal is to restore it to operating condition. I have not plugged it in (beer can capacitor would probably explode and catch fire if I did). It needs a ton of TLC.

It has a full amount of RAM, and the 8080 card was replaced with a Z-80 card (common upgrade of the time); there's enough RAM to run CP/M if I wanted to. Various serial and parallel I/O cards, plus a fixed-sector floppy drive card (good luck finding a drive, let alone media, for anything short of a fortune). I later had others donate to me other cards and parts (including an interesting unpopulated 6502 processor card - but I don't know if the pinout is the same as what the Altair used, or if it's meant for some other S-100 bus computer - despite the S-100 bus supposedly being a standard, there were a few variations of it - as it goes).

I figure if I can get it working to some extent, and get the test program from the manual toggled in and working, I'll consider that a success. But what I'd like to do is take it further, getting my VT-100 terminal hooked up to it, and using some kind of method to boot either BASIC or CP/M from a flash drive or something (I know this can be done).

Sadly, I contacted the case manufacturer about getting a top cover, and had no luck. The company (I don't recall their name), used to make that case as an enclosure that tons of companies used for their equipment. They made it for decades, long after the Altair ceased to be a thing, long after MITS went under. I told them what I needed, and they told me they no longer made that enclosure since a couple of years prior, and no longer had the engineering drawings, either.

So - if I want that part fixed, I'll either have to custom make something myself, try to find the part other ways (maybe visit and talk to people at a vintage computer fest?), or pray I run across one somewhere. Another possibility, though it wouldn't be cheap, would be to have a machine shop make me a one-off of a top that'd fit. Honestly, something tells me the first option might be the best, and in spirit with the machine itself. I doubt it would hurt it's value any.