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 teh 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.
Dave Plummer (Dave’s Garage) received lots of documents on the MTU products with his KIM-1 in a cage system and scanned them for us.
Dave Williams (devilishdesign, vintagetech) has a MT-130, a standalone 6502 system sold by MTU with MTU cards and also scanned documents and imaged floppies.
On the internet I also found a stash of MTU products documents for the PET computer, like PET versions of the K-1008, a KIM-1 bus adapter and more.
All this made me add pages to my website, devoted to MTU. Special attention to the genius behind MTU, Hal Chamberlin. Several of his articles about music and microprocessors and a clean scan of his book Musical Applications of Microprocessors .
One of the documents is the “K-1008-2L Patches to Microsoft BASIC”. Software source of the integration of the text and graphic routines into Microsoft Basic. I already did a simple integration of the K-1008 as terminal into Basic with the Graphics Software package SDTXT and VMSUP, so I have already a lot of the code. So this source wil be typed in also!
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 Visable Memory Replica by Eduardo Casino
Eduardo Casino (see also his work on a KIM-1 Replica), 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.
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.
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
Dave Plummer bought a KIM-1 in a cage with many MTU cards. See his videos on youtube.
Memory test on a K-1008 by The Glitchworks
In the last video Dave shows the little disaster that made his KIM-1 not so happy. Dave asked the help of The Glitchworks to repair and the KIM-1 system was restored. One of the victims was the K-1008 card, Glitchwrks made a memory test program to test it.
Graphics Software package for the MTU K-1008 Visible: 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.
In this package find the following printed, assembled, and commented program listings of
SWIRL demonstration program
LIFE demonstration program
SDTXT Simplified text display subroutine, 22 lines 53 char.
VMSUP Comprehensive graphics subroutine library containing point and line plotting routines, a character drawing routine and an ASCII text display routine.
The original sources are typed in by Eduardo Casino. He also OCR’ed the manual.
He created a package with OCR’ed and type in listings and manual, assembler sources for 64tass, and binaries in Intel hex and MOS papertape format. He kindly allowed it to be published here.
TASM and binary versions of the Graphics Software package Download here the TASM and binary version of the Graphics Software package
Hans Otten has taken the original typed in sources, and changed the assembler format to a more common assembler and assembled with TASM32.
The software has been tested with the K-1008 emulation in the KIM-1 Simulator and (very limited, Eduardo did a great job!) some more proofreading and corrections.
The demos SWIRL and LIFE only require a KIM-1 without expansions.
The text and graphic subroutines SDTXT and VMSUP require more RAM. To show that they are working, versions have been made that connect to MS Basic for the KIM-1 (KB9) as examples how to use.
Several versions are available in source and binary papertape format, instructions are in the folders readme.txt and memorymap.txt files:
– SDTXT original in TASM format
– SDTXT in low or high memory as display for KB9, character input via the standard KIM-1 TTY.
– SDTXT as display for KB9 with an more standard lowercase character set.
– SDTXT as display for KB9 with (incomplete) 8 bit extended character set.
– VMSUP in original in TASM format
– VMSUP in low or high memory as display for KB9 with an more standard lowercase character set.
Demo of SWRIL and Life in the KIM-1 Simulator, on Eduardo Casino’s K-1008 and Dave Plummer’s K-1008
Started by Hal Chamberlin (known also for his articles and books out music generation with computers), the company sold a wide range of (music related) KIM-1/SYM-1/AIM 65 hardware and software.
K-1007-1-A
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