I thought my 1982 Kay-Pro II 'suitcase' was old ! It still works and I actually have some CPM manuals and software for it.
I also have a 1983 Compaq 'Portable' (?). It looks like a suitcase too and weighs 28 pounds.

My Kim-1 was more portable and could be battery powered!

Well, 01001000 01000101 01001100 01001100 01001111 there! This is precisely the computer (an Altair "Blinken' box") we had to assemble at Malaspina College in electronics technology in the late 70s.. and yes it was 600 something bucks, and ALL in binary. No monitor (Apples could use *monitors* at the time, how radical!) Boy oh boy gotta love binary...

There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't. :)
It reminds me of the Heath Kit computers where one does all the soldering.
For me, I would be one to have something that looks like an old computer but has totally modern internals; like some of the projects at the Mini-Itx site.

I believe the first complete kit computer with full I/O was the Sphere not MITS altair.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_1
Scott Adams www.msadams.com

I really like the way the Altair 8800 clone can also have a PC motherboard inside. That's PC case that will turn some heads.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was Micro-soft, not Microsoft...

What useful purpose can a computer with not even a text display serve?

@MrGadget Of what use is a newborn babe?

Mr Gadget, the blinking lights ARE the output (need to interpret sequence of lights). This was mostly used as a logic controller (to control external devices based on variable inputs etc). The computers on the Apollo missions etc had no monitors, they were the brains behind all the components.. certain input data comes into the 'computer' and based on the input, the computer controlled the devices in a particular way.. the way the devices reacted could be 'programmed' into the computer