NEW: Scan of book Microprocessor Systems Engineering, by R.C. Camp, T.A. Smay, C.J. Triska
Only the AIM 65 System 65 parts

The page on the AIM 65 reproduction AIM65-CPLD-3v3 by Yasushi Nagano (Labo Asabu) has now a manual. Quite a large detailed 180+ pages one!

Working with Mr Nagano, I have translated his manual for the AIM 65 reproduction, the AIM65-CPLD-3v3, from Japanese to English. The manual is now downloadable from this page.

In 1983 the company ABM sold a floppy disk system, Commodore IEC 1541 based, for the AIM 65. It also offered a serial interface for the AIM 65 TTY connection and a parallel port.
The system consists of a PCB with the interfaces, a manual and the AH5050 ROM. The user has to add the Commodore diskdrive and IEC cable.

The 1541 Commodore drive was quite popular in the 80ties for SBCs, since it was affordable, the serial IEC connection simple (one 7406 TTL IC and a couple of I/O lines) and the drive itself intelligent, the host did not have to implement a DOS with low level drivers and file system. It is slow, and has a low capacity, small SBCs like the AIM 65 are more than happy with that
Nowadays floppy drives like the 1541 are like dinosaurs. But the SD2IEC 1541 replacement devices are cheap!

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Ralf (ralf02, forum64.de) obtained a working AIM 65, alas without the keyboard.

So he designed and build one. In his own words:

Wenn ich an den Rechner 24 Volt (für den Drucker) und 5 Volt anlege, startet er schon einmal. Allerdings war leider keine Tastatur dabei. Es gibt zwar Tastatur-Nachbauten, die bei Ebay & Co für sehr viel Geld verkauft werden, aber ich dachte mir, das kann man doch auch selbst machen. Also habe ich mit KiCad eine Platine entworfen, mit Cherry MX Tastern bestückt, “blanke” Tastenkappen von Amazon draufgesetzt und mit dem Brother Etikettendrucker beklebt.

Translated:
When Ralf connected the 24 V (printer) and 5 V, the system started. But the keyboard was missing. Though there are keyboard replicas on ebay , costing quite a lot of money, I decided to build one myself. Kicad for the PCB, Cherry MX keys, blank keycaps and a Brother labelprinter for the lettering.

The result is a quality keyboard that fits the AIM 65 very well. See here the page with photos and design.

Mr Nagano published videos and photos of an early prototype of his AIM 65 clone.