The KIM_1 Simulator and the MTU K-1008 Visible Memory
Dave Plummer asked me to add a K-1008 emulation to the KIM-1 Simulator. So I did in the spring of
2023, you can see the screenshots and video on this page made with the Simulator.
In August 2023 Eduardo Casino, who is making a K-108 replica (see below), asked me to enhance the emulator with loading binary images with images for the K-1008. That is added, load a file to memory and if that is K-1008 memory, the video display is shown.
There are several ways an image can be loaded to the K-1008 video display:
- Load a K-1008 formatted binary file into memory. It will show on the K-1008 display if enabled via Settings.
- The Refresh button in the debugger will also refresh the K-10008 display from memory
- With a C header file. see below
How to make a C Header image file with threshold
- Choose a high contrast image
- Load the image in GIMP (a freeware image processing app for Windows, Linux etc)
- Scale the image to 320×200 exactly(have the ties between the dimension windows untied)
- Use the Treshold tool to convert to black and white, play with the settings until it looks good
- Export to, choose the C header file format, a file
- This file can be loaded with the File menu entries of the KIM- Simulator main window and Debugger
- The file is converted if you load in it into memory
- If you have the K-1008 display on (see Settings) it will display it too
- Now you can save the image if you wish with the ‘Memory to file’ menu entries
Make a C Header image file with dithered images
- Open image in GIMP
- Crop the image to 320×200 or a multiple like 960×600
- Image – Scale the image to 320×200
- Image – Mode – Indexed to black white palette Floyd-Steinberg (normal)
- Image – Mode – RGB
- File -Export As Select file type – C source header
- Export
Note there is a command line program in the folder K-1008 load C Header , called LoadK1008 that converts a C header image file to a K-1008 formatted binary.
D:\k1008\LoadK1008.exe h LoadK1008 is a program to convert a 320x200 C header file from GIMP to MTU Visable memory K-1008 image LoadK1008 <C header filename> <K-1008 binary filename>
Prepare the C header file in GIMP as follows:
- Load an image in GIMP
- Scale to 320×200 (detach the link between the sizes)
- Threshold or dither to black and white, play to get a nice result
- Export as C header file
- Feed the C header file to this program
- Convert the result, a binary file into a program like my Convert 8 bit hex formats (included with the KIM-1 Simulator) to a papertape format with the start address of the K-1008 (2000-C000)
- Load the papertape into the KIM-1 or KIM-1 Simulator
Screenshots of images imported:
Images done by Eduardo Casino with dithering.