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KIM-1 interest?

I am the one asking for information.
So my thanks to Dwight and Santo for making the information on this diagnostic board available!
 
Anywho... I'd like to play around with a KIM-1. I've never seen one in the wild ever.

Well then, you've come to the right place! :)

In about a week, I'll have a new batch of 25 KIM-Uno kits for sale. The Uno is a pocket-sized hardware emulation of the KIM-1 thats powered by a 16MHz Arduino Pro Mini. Complete kits with pre-programmed ProMini sell for around $20 including shipping to the 48 Contagious States. It comes with several classic softwares pre-loaded and supports Apple 1 and COSMAC ELF modes as well.

Note that this is not my design, it was designed by Oscar Vermulen of PDP-8/11 replica fame, but I am producing them with his blessing.

You can find full info here on Oscar's site: https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obs...-summary-c1uuh

Drop me a line if interested - I'll also post a Marketplace ad when they are ready.
 
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Dave Williams posted an adventure game for the KIM also.
Oh, I see now, you're Bob Leedom so you already know about that.
There's a recent blog post about it on Hans Otten's site.
http://retro.hansotten.nl/6502-sbc/k...e/kim-venture/

In the (nearly) two years since I started this thread, I've discovered lots of KIM-1 enthusiasts, and Hans Otten's site has had several updates to the KIM-Venture archive portion. In addition, I've been in contact with Code Monkey King in Ukraine (who did a video interview with me about old-school programming from back in the day; you can find his stuff on YouTube), Nils Andreas in Germany (who has been playing my KIM Baseball game; see his archive at netzherpes.de), and Jeff Nay (Florida) and Dominic Bumbaca (just outside of Washington D.C.) who have been (along with Code Monkey King) dissecting and playing KIM-Venture.

Best of all, Dominic is repairing my KIM-1 for me (yay!) so I can fire it up again.

I've enjoyed finding out that there's so much interest in this vintage computer, and I'm looking forward to putting my 6502 brain cells to use again.
 
If one wants, I have the board and schematics for the small 6532 adapter. The adapter has one PAL and an EEPROM. It is 2 pc boards that are interconnected. One board translates the pins between the 6530 and the 6532. The other has the requires chips and 6532 socket. There are 2 wire jumpers. One to enable reprogramming the EEPROM and the other to select -002 or -003 address decoding.
The EEPROM needs to fit in a space it wasn't intended to go in. I deal with this by folding the leads under it. Once the rest of the KIM-1 is functional, one can use the diagnostic board to program it for the selected location. The advantage of this adapter is that it fits under the 6532 and doesn't encroach on other spaces of the board. It does raise the chip by about 3/8 inches.
I have the PAL code as well but I don't have a PASM source, as I wrote the PAL code by hand.
It, of course, would be easier to get one of those that bought the kits I put together to give up his unused adapter parts. Most KIM-1's had other failures. I made up 10 kits, so they are out there.
Dwight
 
If you read the KIM-1 instructions, you'll note that the other connector has a pin that must be grounded. If it is not grounded, none of the -002 or -003 ROMs are enabled. This means the EPROM on the diagnostic board can take over the boot code. The diagnostic board has a flipflop that resets to disable the KIM-1s ROMs to take over boot. Once written to it re-enables the KIM-1s ROMs. The code on the diagnostic board can then be accessed at $C000 ( as I recall ). As long as the diagnostic is set to the boot with the switch it used the flop and takes over the $F000 1K address space. If only needs this address space to take over board and then vectors to $C000, where the diagnostics are. If you look at the pictures, you'll see three wires going to the other connector ( why you need both connectors ).
The KIM-1 was designed this was so that one could use external code that didn't depend on any of the onboard monitor functions. I use the reset to clear the flipflop on the diagnotic board so that is dual maps that EPROM at $C000 and $F000. Once booted, I do a write to the flop that re-enable the onboard memory mapping.
Dwight
 
The board has been built by Liu Ganning on PCB after he recreated the circuit diagram from the information Dwight sent me.
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And it helped! The RAM test, one of the first to perform indicated a RAM error. The RAM IC was not broken, it was the 74125 buffer. Replacing that and his KIM-1 was operational again.

Click image for larger version  Name:	FGAZnBTVIAU1rAr.jpg Views:	0 Size:	183.0 KB ID:	1235191
 
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If you read the KIM-1 instructions, you'll note that the other connector has a pin that must be grounded. If it is not grounded, none of the -002 or -003 ROMs are enabled. This means the EPROM on the diagnostic board can take over the boot code.

Ah, clever, I didn't realize that. I have no memory of doing anything conscious like that way back when wiring up my KIM-1. I think I just gave it power and called it a day.

Mind, it been...awhile.
 
Ah, clever, I didn't realize that. I have no memory of doing anything conscious like that way back when wiring up my KIM-1. I think I just gave it power and called it a day.

Mind, it been...awhile.

On P2-K. It is called DECEN. Many people just wire it, to ground, on their boards without using a connector. To use my diagnostic board, the diagnostic board must control it to take over the boot code.
Dwight
 
The board has been built by Liu Ganning on PCB after he recreated the circuit diagram from the information Dwight sent me.

And it helped! The RAM test, one of the first to perform indicated a RAM error. The RAM IC was not broken, it was the 74125 buffer. Replacing that and his KIM-1 was operational again.


I'm not particularly proud of the boards layout. It would have been better to reverse the 74xx ICs to match the EPROM. One doen't want to plug things in backwards.
It was my first try at using KiCad. I had a lot of learning curve to get through.
I mostly like KiCad but it does have a few feature, as I recall that were issues for me. The biggest one, for me, was the file structure used and where things were.
Dwight
 
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