Patches to Microsoft Basic K-1008-2L sources, binaries and demos

This package was distributed as a manual and a cassette with some binaries. The user is supposed to type in and adapt the sources himself.

K-1008-2L Patches to Microsoft BASIC manual, cleaned up

The original sources of the Basic patches, the Basic demonstration program and the parallel keyboard routine are typed in by me in october 2023.

Assembler and binary versions of the Patches
Download here the assembler sources and binary versions of the K-1008-2L Patches to Microsoft BASIC
In this archive:
The manual: K-1008-2L Patches to Microsoft BASIC cleaned.pdf
Folders with running software typed in and assembled:
– vmbas kim1 tty lowercase: tested version of the patches to be used with the KIM-1 keyboard. Adapted for KB-9 V1.1, real lowercae characterset. see the readme.txt how to use, KB-9 included.
– vmbas Basic demo: tested with vmbas kim1 tty lowercase

Additional:
– vmbas original: original source in modern assembler format. to be used with a parallel keyboard routine
– vmbas parallel keyboard: addon to use a parallel keyboard connected to the free RRIOT port

The running software has been tested with the K-1008 emulation in the KIM-1 Simulator.

MTU produced also a number of products for the Commodore PET.

The K-1008 Visible Memory, original for the KIM-1, was also adapted to be used on the Commodore PET.
Same specifications, 320×200 bit mapped graphics, with a PET interface.

K-1008-6 Visible Memory board for the PET

Disk 1 of MTU K-1008-6 software.
Disk 2 of MTU K-1008-6 software.

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K-1008 Visable Memory Replica by Eduardo Casino
Eduardo Casino, see also his other work on KIM-1 projects, he is working on what aims to be a faithful replica of MTU’s K-1008 Visable Memory card for the KIM-1. He is following basically the same procedure as he did for the KIM-1 Rev. D replica: reproducing the schematics from the existing documentation and using photos of the original card to correct it and to replicate the PCB, and doing all of it just with open source tools.

As always, everything is available on his GitHub page.

The first tests are good!

KIM-1 Expansion Board for MTU cards repository.

This board follows the MTU standard for the KIM-1 expansion bus and enables to connect up to five cards, like the K-1008 replica.
Additionally, all signals of the KIM-1 are replicated on an edge connector to allow further expansions and also on a pin header for easy breadboarding.

The MTU bus connects 1 to 1 to the KIM-1 expansion connector with the exception of pins 2,3, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and X, because MTU boards use some of these pins for power and expanded 18 bit address bus. See page 33 of the MTU Fall 1980 6502 Peripherals and Software catalog. Two pin connectors have to be wired to pins J (K7) and K (DECODE ENABLE) of the KIM-1 application connector.

Like in the original MTU’s bus motherboard, a five screw terminal block provides power connections for both the KIM-1 (GND, +5V and +12V regulated) and the expansion boards (+7.5V and +16V unregulated). Also, as in the original, the +12V terminal is not really connected to anything.

Everything is available on his GitHub page.

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

1. Choose a high contrast image
2. Load the image in GIMP (a freeware image processing app for Windows, Linux etc)
3. Scale the image to 320×200 exactly(have the ties between the dimension windows untied)
4. Use the Treshold tool to convert to black and white, play with the settings until it looks good
5. Export to, choose the C header file format, a file
6. This file can be loaded with the File menu entries of the KIM- Simulator main window and Debugger
7. The file is converted if you load in it into memory
8. If you have the K-1008 display on (see Settings) it will display it too
9. 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

1. Open image in GIMP
2. Crop the image to 320×200 or a multiple like 960×600
3. Image – Scale the image to 320×200
4. Image – Mode – Indexed to black white palette Floyd-Steinberg (normal)
5. Image – Mode – RGB
6. File -Export As Select file type – C source header
7. 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:

1. Load an image in GIMP
2. Scale to 320×200 (detach the link between the sizes)
3. Threshold or dither to black and white, play to get a nice result
4. Export as C header file
5. Feed the C header file to this program
6. 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)
7. Load the papertape into the KIM-1 or KIM-1 Simulator

Screenshots of images imported:

Images done by Eduardo Casino with dithering.