My super minty Intext ICS/Elenco XK-300 M6800 trainer plus some extras

[cjs]

Been wanting an NEC trainer for awhile! What are the trainers on the right?

The upper right is an Adtek MP-85, with an 8085 CPU. It's not too far off from a clone of the NEC TK-85 (as you can probably guess from the very similar keypad), though it has only six digits on the display rather than eight, and uses a dedicated chip to run the display rather than DMA from main memory. I've not really played with it much yet, though I intend to disassemble the ROM soon, which should be interesting to compare with the TK-85.

The lower right is a Toshiba EX-80, which is a fairly old (looks to be '70s) trainer board that's interestingly different from the NEC TK-80. That one needs a fair amount of work before it will be running again. (As does my TK-80 itself, actually.)

As for disassembling ROMs, I was being a bit facetious, but it's easier than you probably think, and an excellent way to learn assembly language.

 

[mountainking]

The upper right is an Adtek MP-85, with an 8085 CPU. It's not too far off from a clone of the NEC TK-85 (as you can probably guess from the very similar keypad), though it has only six digits on the display rather than eight, and uses a dedicated chip to run the display rather than DMA from main memory. I've not really played with it much yet, though I intend to disassemble the ROM soon, which should be interesting to compare with the TK-85.

The lower right is a Toshiba EX-80, which is a fairly old (looks to be '70s) trainer board that's interestingly different from the NEC TK-80. That one needs a fair amount of work before it will be running again. (As does my TK-80 itself, actually.)

As for disassembling ROMs, I was being a bit facetious, but it's easier than you probably think, and an excellent way to learn assembly language.

Lol, yeah, now that I can see them on my laptop instead of my phone I can see their names. Wow, looks like that Toshiba has built in video output, you don't see that on many trainers!

Yeah, I was just trying to defend manuals, lol, when I said that about disassembling ROMs

 

[mountainking]

The upper right is an Adtek MP-85, with an 8085 CPU. It's not too far off from a clone of the NEC TK-85 (as you can probably guess from the very similar keypad), though it has only six digits on the display rather than eight, and uses a dedicated chip to run the display rather than DMA from main memory. I've not really played with it much yet, though I intend to disassemble the ROM soon, which should be interesting to compare with the TK-85.

The lower right is a Toshiba EX-80, which is a fairly old (looks to be '70s) trainer board that's interestingly different from the NEC TK-80. That one needs a fair amount of work before it will be running again. (As does my TK-80 itself, actually.)

As for disassembling ROMs, I was being a bit facetious, but it's easier than you probably think, and an excellent way to learn assembly language.

And those are indeed nice keypads on those trainers (well, on 3 of them at least)!

 

[dadecoza]

Recently I found a XK-300 trainer on Facebook Marketplace for a very good price and couldn't resist.

The first thing I did was to type in the program from the third post in this thread (@epooch) and since then I have just been messing around with it.

I added the 1K optional user RAM and also a user ROM containing a patched version of MIKBUG, and it works really well!

The 1K RAM is a bit limited but hey, it was enough for the ZX81 and at least I don't have to share it with screen memory.

Details on the project here ... https://github.com/dadecoza/mikbug-xk-300 .

 

[mountainking]

Recently I found a XK-300 trainer on Facebook Marketplace for a very good price and couldn't resist.

The first thing I did was to type in the program from the third post in this thread (@epooch) and since then I have just been messing around with it.

I added the 1K optional user RAM and also a user ROM containing a patched version of MIKBUG, and it works really well!

The 1K RAM is a bit limited but hey, it was enough for the ZX81 and at least I don't have to share it with screen memory.

Details on the project here ... https://github.com/dadecoza/mikbug-xk-300 .

Nice! I unfortunately had to sell mine because of money problems but I feel like the person it went to will appreciate it and probably is putting it to more use than I was so I try not to lament on letting it go. I still have a few more trainers so I'm not without my toys

 

[mountainking]

Recently I found a XK-300 trainer on Facebook Marketplace for a very good price and couldn't resist.

The first thing I did was to type in the program from the third post in this thread (@epooch) and since then I have just been messing around with it.

I added the 1K optional user RAM and also a user ROM containing a patched version of MIKBUG, and it works really well!

The 1K RAM is a bit limited but hey, it was enough for the ZX81 and at least I don't have to share it with screen memory.

Details on the project here ... https://github.com/dadecoza/mikbug-xk-300 .

Btw, I have a book connected to the XK-300 that someone gave me that I would willing to give you if you were willing to pay for the shipping. If you look back at this thread you will see the book I'm talking about but I will try to dig it up and repost some pics of it when I get a chance.

Alan