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New KIM-1 info and more

Added again some KIM-1 information!

MDT 650 photos (John Feagans)

Scans from the Commodore International Historical Society (Dave McMurtrie):
KIM-1 Schematic Poster alternative scan (Dave McMurtrie)
Johnson Computers and McShane brochures
MOS Newsletters and brochures
Microsoft Basic for KIM-1 alternative scan
KIM-1 ROMs source listing scan
KIM-1 DATA1-K assembler manual (incomplete)

MTU K-1008 Visable Memory

All about the MTU K-1008 Visible Memory: documents, programs, images, videos and replica, you find it here.
The MTU K-1008 is an 8K memory and video display board. Part of the MTU family of card cages and RAM/ROM boards, around 1978 for KIM-1, SYM-1, AIM 65. Later also for Commodore PET systems.

I have some K-1008 information on paper as Fall Catalog and K-1008 User manuals of MTU, the listings in the Graphics software Package and hires photos of the board.

Triggered by Dave Plummer, who owns a K-1008 and made some demo programs I added this spring the K-1008 as peripheral to the KIM-1 Simulator.
A basic working version, with memory settings as the original. A 6502 program in the simulator could fill the video display.
Dave made nice youtube videos about his KIM-1 system with MTU cards in a card cage, see Dave’s Garage.

Then Eduardo Casino, of KIM-1 Replica fame, started to design a replica, including an expansion bus. He motivated me to enhance the Simulator.

Eduardo also OCR’ed and typed in the Graphics Software Package programs for the MTU K-1008. I played with the sources and coupled the text display programs to Microsoft KB9 Basic.

He made a quick and dirty binary image to show on the K-1008 video display. I took his idea and added a facility to the Simulator to load any image to the K-1008.
This requires the use of GIMP, the image handling program, to create intermediate black and white 320×200 files as ‘C header files’.
These C header file can be imported in the Simulator and shown on the display. A command line utility LoadK1008 converts these C header files to a binary image in K-1008 format.

All this required a page with all the K-1008 information: documents, programs, images, videos and replica, you find it here.

Update 10 september: Eduardo Casino has made available his work on the Graphics Software Package: OCR’ed manual, listings, sources, binaries made with 64tass assembler.

KIM-1 Simulator 1.3.0 -> 1.3.4

KIM-1 Simulator 1.3.x adds the improvements from the 1.2.x branch to the V1.1.8 branch.

NEw improvements also: bundled with the also recently updated Convert 8 bit Hex formats program and the SST switch now turns on the built-in debugger!
1.3.1 Adds refresh of K-1008 memory with File/tapeload and debugger refresh.
1.3.2 Load C header image files into K-1008 video display, and command line utility to convert C header file to K-1008 binary
1.3.3 Adds a more realistic aspect ratio variant of the K-1008 display besides the simpler and therefore faster ones.
V 1.3.4 August 31 Read text file to console improved, improved K-1008 settings

Have fun with this release and as always: keep me posted of wishes and bugs.

You may ask, but this will never be more than a simulation and not a real KIM-1 emulator, many First Book of KIM programs that manipulate the LED displays will not work in this simulator architecture. TTY programs work well. Use the debugger!

Convert8bit hex V2.4

The Convert 8bit hex formats utility has reached version 2.4.

Bugs fixed:
– one off papertape save fixed
– KIM tape format more robust
New save format: Define Byte. assembler formatted .byte $XY, prefix text user defined.

The last book of KIM

On his blog Nils has posted for download ‘The last book of KIM’:

Ich habe in letzter Zeit Energie in dieses kleine (auf Deutsch geschriebene) Heftchen gelegt.

Es ist allen Enthusiasten gewidmet, denen, die es werden wollen, und denjenigen, die es waren. Es soll einen in der Computerhistorie bislang unterrepräsentierten Mikrocomputer ins rechte Licht rücken und seine Rolle bei der Entwicklung hin zum modernen Heimcomputer beschreiben.

Viel Spass

Webdoktor

Funkschau 1979 KIM-1 AIM 65 6502 articles

Funkschau 1979 KIM-1, AIM 5 and 6502 articles. German, scanned by Matthias, SBC at VzEkC e. V. forum

Original KIM-1 ROMs reproduced

I have two sets of KIM-1 ROMs. One set is the original KIM-1 dump by Dwight Elvey, in which the filler bytes (unused locations in the ROM) are filled with $00.
Alas the dumps by Dwight have a couple of bit errors and the NMI vector is wrong.

The other set is the result of assembling the source in which the assembler used $FF for the filler bytes. It makes sense to use $FF, since EPROMs can be programmed byte for byte ‘1’ later to ‘0’s.
Functionally the filler byte is irrelevant, so I present here the ROMs with filler byte 00 (corrected Dwight original KIM-1 dumps) and filler byte FF (assembly result).

6530-002 $1C00-$1FFF, filler bytes $FF 6530-002 ROM
6530-003 $1800-$1BFF, filler bytes $FF 6530-003 ROM

6530-002 $1C00-$1FFF, filler bytes $00 6530-002 ROM
6530-003 $1800-$1BFF, filler bytes $00 6530-003 ROM

Small update to KB-9 V1.2 and KB-6 V1.2

Small update to KB-9 V1.2 and KB-6 V1.2: the NULL command is back, to ensure binary compatible tokenized saved Basic programs.
Now the USR location is the same in KB-9 V1.1 and V1.2, 2040 and 2041 (see Nils’ blog KIM-1 Basic and the use of assembler subroutines – netzherpes).

In KB-6 V1.2 it is 8254, 8255.

If you downloaded these , please do it again

AIM65-CPLD-3V3 for sale

Labu Asabu made 5 units of the AIM65-CPLD-3V3 for sale.
The price is 55,000 yen for a full set + accessories.
Shipping costs will be charged. Overseas customers will be charged customs duties for imports.
Email to info@labo-asabu.com

More info here!

aim65_quartus, an FPGA clone

Filippo (shinymetal6) published an alpha version of aim65_quartus, an FPGA clone on his github resource.

Forum discussion on the MisTer forum here.

Here the readme of aim65_quartus by Filippo:

This is an alpha release of a verilog Rockwell AIM65 in an Intel FPGA using the SocKIT board.
The Arrow SocKIT board is a nearly compatible TerASIC DE0 board where MiSTer runs.
This is a MiSTer port on the Arrow SocKIT, and as I have a SocKIT board I used their templates from MiSTer SocKIT FPGA page.

Behind the templates, the structures seem to me very similar, so probably a port on the MiSTer board should be relatively easy, but I don’t have such board.

Basically the aim65_quartus runs like an AIM65 at 1 MHz, has 32KBytes of ram ( who had so much ram ? not me for sure ! ) and excluding printer and tape all the peripherals are in place and runs.

The ROMs come from Hans Hotten funtastic pages, like all the other information I found there.
The 6502 core is the Arlet one, or the Hoglet67 65C02 version based on the Arlet core. This can be selected recompiling the code

The 20 AIM65 alphanumeric displays are routed to a simple video output, some ( quite bad I know ) pictures below.

The MiSTer menu can be used to have the expansion rom with basic, forth and pl/65, again some pictures below

Still with the MiSTer menu the serial port can be enabled, the characters color can be changed and the video can run at full screen

Still to do:

  • find a way to load and store programs, i’m still studying the MiSTer framework
  • fix an annoying behaviour on the serial port, tricky enough
  • find why sometimes the screen jumps
  • fix the keyboard as for now works only with US keyboard
  • a lot of more bugs I have not yet found …
  • As an additional and in my opinion useful add on, I have implemented a clear screen pressing F4, currently not used on real AIM65.
    This too needs a bit of fixing here and there, but when time will leave me to work on it again I will try to fix it

    aim65_quartus in action



    Just booted, R command in action


    Some memory dump


    Basic started


    The board where AIM65 runs …