AIM 65 keyboard replica

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.

KIM-1 PCB replica Eduardo Casino

Eduardo Casino has designed with modern tools, like Kicad and image software Inkscape a PCB for the KIM-1 which is as close as he could get to a Rev D.

Based upon images on the Revisions pages on this site.

See here for the design.

AIM 65 clone updates

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

ESCO SBC

User wikokim on the forum.classic-computing.de bought this system in 1978/79. He published documents and ROM dumps.

See here for this ‘KIM-1’ like system.

KIM-4 photos

I received photos from Joseph Avins of a KIM-4 motherboard connected to a KIM-1.

Added tot the KIM-1 hardware pages, read more here.

KIM-4 (photo by Joseph Avins)

KIM-4 (photo by Joseph Avins)

RSC-Forth computers

The R6501Q and R65F11 IC’s I acquired are Rockwell parts for single chip computer systems. Well, they contain a lot more than a 6502, like ROM, RAM, I/O.

A couple of pages devoted to these IC’s and RCS-Forth, the Rockwell Single Chip FORTH system are here.

Elektor Junior VIA 6522 German

Found in my archive: the German version of the Elektor Junior VIA 6522 book.

Added tot the Elektor books page.

ZIPtape for KIM-1

Glen Deas sent me an article about the Ziptape cassette interface, 1978, by the late Lew Edwards. Glen made a PCB for it.

The article about the Fast Cassette Interface is part of my CW Moser Assembler/editor package. Scanned by me in 2010 to the file kimfastcassette.pdf and on my website with the CW Moser package for years now .
Glen Deas knew it was designed by Lew Edwards and entered the source in modern assembler format.

John Bell Engineering

The page on John Bell Engineering has been expanded to a page per SBC, to keep the information accessible. See it here.

Glen Deas supplied negatives of 80-153 and the Z80 cards, thanks!

I also added the information I have on Apple ][ cards by John Bell, like the 6522 VIA and A/D cards.

My retro toolchain

Development for my old 8 bit retro SBC’s has become much easier with fast PCs and good tools. All cross development.

What took hours on my KIM-1: load editor form tape -edit source – save on tape (multiple tape files if big) – assemble form tape to tape – load binary from tape – run
can now be done very fast.
Powerful text editors, cross assembler, KIM-1 Simulator, seconds per iteration.

The only slow part remains: me!

More on my favorite toolchain here.