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AIM 65/40

The AIM 65/40 is a SBC with the look and feel of the AIM 65, , with a 40 character display (over the 20 of the AIM 65). More memory, more ROM, User prioritized interrupts, RM 65 bus expansion.

(from http://oldcomputers.net/AIM-65-40.html)

AIM = Advanced Interactive Microcomputer.
65= Rockwell 6502 processor.
40= 40 column display.

An upgrade of the original Rockwell AIM-65, this model has a larger display, among other features.

The four edge-card connectors are labeled:

  • Parallel
  • Serial
  • TTY
  • Expansion



From the Rockwell “Interactive” newsletter, issue no. 5:

Rockwell International will shortly be introducing the AIM 65/40. The AIM 65/40 microcomputer is made up of an R6502 based single board computer with on-board expansion to 65 kilobytes of memory, a full graphics 280 X N dot matrix or 40-column alphanumeric printer, a 40-character alphanumeric display, and a full ASCII keyboard with user assignable function keys.

An advanced generation of Rockwell’s popular AIM 65 microcomputer, the AIM 65/40 will be available as a complete system or as individual computer and intelligent peripheral modules.

The AIM 65/40 Series 1000 single board computer modules feature system address expansion up to 128K bytes with on-board memory up to 48 kilobytes of RAM and up to 32 kilobytes of ROM or EPROM. Six level priority interrupt logic and 16-bit multi-mode timers are included for flexibility in production automation and laboratory control applications. Extensive I/O capability provides an RS-232C asynchronous communications interface channel with programmable data rates of up to 19,200 baud for terminals or modems, plus a 20 ma current loop TTY interface, dual audio cassette interfaces, and two user-definable 8-bit parallel ports with handshake control, two 16-bit timer/counters and an 8-bit serial shift register.

Three additional 8-bit parallel ports are directly programmable as dictated by the user’s application to provide more TTL level I/O or interface to keyboards, displays, and printer modules. Manufacturer supplied ROM resident software included with the AIM 65/40 Series 1000 computer provide I/O drivers for the intelligent peripherals and more. The printer connector is compatible with the Centronics parallel interface that is so popular with high speed dot matrix printers.

A buffered system bus accommodates off-board expansion via Rockwell’s RM 65 microcomputer modules which include intelligent peripheral controllers for mini or standard floppy disks, CRT monitors and the IEEE-488 instrumentation bus, plus additional communications interfaces and a selection of RAM, ROM and EPROM memory expansion options up to 128K bytes of memory and memory-mapped I/O capacity.

The AIM 65/40 Model 0600 graphics printer module consists of an intelligent microprocessor controller integrated with the printer mechanism. The module operates in two modes. Character mode operation prints upper and lower case ASCII character font formatted as 40-characters/line at 240 lines/minute. Full graphics mode outputs any data pattern desired as a 280 X N dot matrix. With its own microprocessor controller, user changeable character generator ROM, thermal head drivers, motor control, and parallel handshake ASCII interface, this freestanding peripheral minimizes demand on the AIM 65/40 central processor, permitting maximum system performance.

The Model 0400 display module features a bright, crisp vacuum fluorescent 40-character alphanumeric display. This stand-alone module has its own microprocessor controller for display of alphanumeric, special, and limited graphics characters, parallel handshake ASCII interface, support circuitry and operates from a single +5 volt power supply. Special control commands permit variable display timing, cursor control, auto-scroll, and character blinking.

The Module 0200 keyboard module provides a terminal style alphanumeric and special character keyboard matrix with 64 keys, including locking ALL CAPS, control, and eight user definable function keys. Three keys labeled ATTN, RESET, and PAPER FEED have dedicated lines to the interface connector.

The AIM 65/40 Series 5000 incorporates a ROM resident software system and integrates all four modules into a complete microcomputer system. The interactive monitor software controls the AIM 65/40 system with single keystroke, self-prompting commands, supports software development with assembler, debug and control commands. A multi-file text editor supports both line and screen editing functions. Optional languages include a fully symbolic R6500 assembler and BASIC. FORTH, PASCAL, and PL/65 software packages are in development.

The AIM 65/40 is expected to be available sometime during the third quarter of 1981.

The following photos and files are given to me by Jörg, Ross Milbourne and David Colglazier, thanks!

Datasheet AIM 65/40 A65/40-2000 -3000 -4000 -5000
AIM 65-40 System Users Manual
AIM 65/40 Printer Circuit Diagram
AIM 65/40 Circuit Diagram
AIM65 40 Forth Manual
AIM-65 Forth Supplement 65_40

ROMs

R14B2-11_8_25.bin
R32T3-12_9_22.bin
R32U4-11_1_10.bin
R32U5-11_9_4.bin
R32U6-11_8_25.bin

 

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SPS Software Preparation System

Software Preparation System Development

The R6500 Software Preparation System (SPS) is a low cost software development system for the R6500 family, for the 65C02 and 6502 and otehr 6500 family members.
The system can be used with a simple AIM 65 with cassette recorder and dump terminal, to floppy based systems with video display.


SPS and guide ROMs download:

Software Preparation System Development Configurations guide

SPS DOS.BIN
Z22 SPS100 war im AIM.BIN
Z23 SPS100.BIN
Z25 SPS100.BIN
Z26 SPS100.BIN

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AIM 65 magazines

PL/65


PL/65 Manual in PDF format

PL/65 Manual in text format
PL/65 disassembly, no comments
PL/65 V1.0 ROM 1 
PL/65 V1.0 ROM 2 
The last number in the ROM file is the location of the ROM in the board, see photo.

Forth for the AIM 65


AIM 65 Forth Manual for the AIM65, V1.3, first two chapters, overview, installation and start for AIM 65


AIM 65 Forth V1.4 Manual for the AIM 65/40, after chapter 2 is this manual also applicable also to AIM 65


Compact A65-050 AIM Forth ROMS description of all Forth words

First Forth ROM V1.3 AIM 65-050
Second Forth ROM AIM 65-050

Basic for AIM 65


Basic Language Reference manual in PDF format
Basic Language Reference manual in text format
First Basic ROM R3225-11
Second Basic ROM R3226-11 part R32J1-11
See Create your own Version of Microsoft BASIC for 6502 and Microsoft BASIC for 6502 for a commented assembler source for AIM 65 Basic.


Basic reference card AIM 65

Pascal for the AIM 65


Instant Pascal manual

ROM R32P2
ROM R32P3
ROM R32P4
ROM R32P5
ROM R32P6
Instant Pascal, an interactive Pascal variant “INSTANT PASCAL(TM) (C)1981 MELVIN E. CONWAY”
5 ROMS, available in hex format. See the manual how to install, it needs an external expansion adapter, see the Other hardware page

Background of Instant Pascal

By Mel Conway http://heed.melconway.com/HEED/History.html

I proposed to Rockwell to build an “Instant Pascal” trainer to run on the AIM-65, and the proposal was accepted. The AIM-65 was a single-board computer with an 8-bit Rockwell 6502 (the processor used in the Apple II), 4K bytes (that’s right, 4096 bytes) of internal “random-access” memory (RAM), up to 20K bytes of on-board “read-only” memory (ROM), and various byte-at-a-time input-output possibilities. The user interface consisted of a teletype-like keyboard, a single-line 20-position LED alphanumeric display, and a thermal strip printer with 20 characters per line. (The only widely used external storage was an audio cassette recorder.) The intention was that the user would get Instant Pascal in the form of a set of ROMs. You plug these ROMs into the AIM-65 and you have a Pascal trainer.

The AIM-65 had multiple hardware limitations. The major one, of course, was the 4K RAM. But the single-line display wasn’t helpful. Clearly, any Pascal editor would have to be a “line” editor, not a “screen” editor. The traditional solution would have been to prepare a program in four steps: (1) the entry step, in which you prepare a source tape; (2) the edit step, in which you modify your source program by doing tape-to-tape copies under control of the keyboard and display; (3) the compile step, in which you read a source tape and write an object tape; and (4) the run step, in which you load the object tape and execute it. Debugging is clearly a problem because you have to have both the source program in view (so you can find and fix your mistakes) and the object program in memory (so the program can run). How can you do that in 4K of memory? And how are you going to do all four (or five, if there is a separate debugger) steps under control of 20K of ROM? I had no intention of building a language trainer that way.

There was an alternative: to store the Pascal source code in the 4K RAM and interpret it directly. Waterloo Pascal1 did that. They had the right idea, but directly interpreting source code made it really slow compared to BASIC, which was the alternative at the time. I was, frankly, relieved to discover how slow Waterloo Pascal was, because I already had the outline of another approach.

The Approach

As with Waterloo Pascal, my solution to eliminating the build-run dissonance was a single internal representation of the program that stayed in RAM. It had to be compact, efficiently interpretable, and readily translatable back to Pascal source so that no source program needed to be stored. The approach I took is today called a “tokenized” representation of the Pascal program. The internal representation of the Pascal program was syntactically correct Pascal: I specified the token language using the formal Pascal syntax. This assured syntactic similarity between external and internal representations of a program. I put one constraint on the user: text had to be entered in “prettyprint” form (no indenting necessary), one line per prettyprint line. Fortunately, this was not a source of complaint, because entering code this way was considered to be good practice; thus this most serious limitation was reframed as a feature. The prettyprint input constraint permitted line-by-line translation into token form (and local syntax checking, with immediate feedback), and there was no need to store more than one line of Pascal text internally.

The parts of the program consisted of (1) a single-line source-code tokenizer/syntax checker (“forward translator” from keyboard to RAM); (2) its reverse, a single-line token-to-source “backward translator” from RAM to printer; and (3) a token interpreter that executed the program. There was a fourth component, a “binder,” that scanned the tokenized program after you entered the “run” command, and established (and checked) those syntactic connections that spanned multiple lines. The binder had very little to do, and its execution time was typically imperceptible. Source-code debugging fell out of this design: any line being executed by the interpreter can at the same time be output as Pascal source by the backward translator. During debugging the system could appear to execute at the source level, stop on lines with breakpoints, and evaluate source-level “watch” expressions.

The Lesson

The result of this design was the illusion of executing Pascal source language, but at the speeds of typical BASIC programs. In fact, maintaining the illusion of a single program representation became the principal user-interface design goal. It is this illusion of always dealing with your program at the source-code level that resolves the build/run dissonance and that obviates the need for a separate debugger.

The design was successful and next found itself inside Macintosh Pascal in 1984. But the resolution of the dissonance wasn’t complete. Instant Pascal was a trainer, not a construction tool. As compiler writers know, you don’t have a real production tool until you can build the tool using itself, and this could not be done.

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Rockwell AIM 65 books

Microprocessor Systems Engineering
R.C. Camp, T.A. Smay, C.J. Triska
AIM 65 System 65 parts
AIM 65 Laboratory Manual And Study Guide, Leo Scanlon
Microcomputer experimentation with the AIM 65
Best of MICRO 3, AIM 65 SYM-1 KIM-1 part June 1979 May 1980
Rockwell Produktübersicht in deutsch
Rockwell Microelectronic Data Devices Catalog 1979
1981 Rockwell Electronic Devices Division Data Book
1984 Rockwell Data Book
1985 Rockwell Data Book
1987 Rockwell Controller Products Databook
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AIM 65 clones


AIM 65 circuit diagrams

Circuit diagrams

Large format scan of Circuit diagram AIM 65 Poster

AIM 65 Schematic Poster revision 4
Circuit diagram PDF format Revision 0
Circuit diagram PDF format Revision 1
Circuit diagram PDF format Revision 2
Circuit diagram PDF format Revision 3
Circuit diagram PDF format Revision 4
Circuit diagram PDF format Revision 5

Dynaterm took over AIM 65 production via a license from Rockwell after 1986.
Here a document describing revisions of the board.