Aeroraptor
Member
I posted this over at the 68kMLA, but I realized people here might also be interested. (Edited copy/paste)
So, about two weeks ago a guy to ask if I was interested in some old equipment he was getting rid of, of course I'd take it so I said sure and later he swung by the house with a bunch of old fairly generic PC stuff, mostly cables and basic cards. He said he'd be by again soon with a bunch more, once he saw how positive my reaction to the old equipment was. Most of it was pretty standard, several new Etherlink II cards, couple PCI video cards, baby AT mobo with a Pent Pro, laplink setups, ya know- basic 90s PC stuff.
About a week after that, three days ago, he came by with something really cool. A little, and I mean little, this thing is 2" thick, 4" wide, and 6" long, black box and a manual. A big manual. The box had a single RS232 db25 port and a reset switch (and an external PSU, rated at 9v 300ma). However I've since added a power switch and made a socket/plug for the power supply so it's detachable. According to the guy, and the manual, this is an RSC-FORTH, or Rockwell Single Chip FORTH development/hobbyist board. According to the manual and stack of papers I got with it (one of them being an ad) say it's from around fall 83, and was made by a company called Rockwell International. It is an entirely self sustained computer, complete with parallel-type headers and a low-level floppy drive interface. The processor is a Rockwell R65F11, a 1MHz, 40 pin, chip based off the 6502 with some enhancements. Ones I see straight off are that it has room for 3K ROM and 192B RAM, as well as a direct TTL based serial interface, to bring it to RS232C specs you just need a handful of discrete parts, all of which are on my board so it works as normal serial. My board also has a power regulator on it, so anything from 6 to 10v DC works. In the 3K of ROM is a very basic, but still usable, implementation of the FORTH development language. Basic, but still very usable.
To make it more usable, there are three chip sockets, two of mine are filled: one 2K RAM chip and one ROM. The RAM is a standard CDM6116E2 chip, the ROM is another Rockwell part, R65FR1, running also at 1MHz. It contains the full version of the FORTH development language, dictionary and all. Into the third slot I can put an EEPROM to save applications to, or theoretically 12kB RAM, as the R65F11 supports up to 16kB outside its 192B. To connect to it, you connect any serial terminal/terminal emulator, no null modem adapter needed. It operates at 1200 baud, 7 bits, no parity, 2 stop bits, hardware flow control. I can set it to 9600 baud from software, but since it's text only it's not really sensible. In total there are eight chips, processor, ROM, RAM, two 74xxxx TTL chips for data latches, and a few little discrete chips. The board is blue and exactly 10cm on each side.
The part that makes this little box really usable, though, is the manual. It's probably around 200 pages or so, the original copy was typed on a typewriter and then xeroxed, bound with those plastic rings. This thing is just absolutely packed with FORTH theory, low level hardware info on the R65F11, loads of code examples, schematics, troubleshooting, etc. When I get the time I really need to take it apart and scan it all, it's priceless. Without it the RSC-FORTH box would be pretty useless.
Here's pictures of the case/board (and some video cards I also got from him) - http://picasaweb.google.com/john8520/RSCFORTHVideoCards
And the front panel after I added the switch and whatnot (dig the labels!) - http://i28.tinypic.com/2z7ik5y.jpg
And here's a scan (not mine, but I own the document) of an add for it - http://i29.tinypic.com/15z1nyr.jpg
So far I'm having a lot of fun programming and fiddling with it, it's a seriously cool little computer, definitely the smallest and most powerful, considering its age. Very easy to use, you can program it in two ways too, either program it line by line, or you can create one big (or several big, linked together) named operations. An example of code for each, respectively could be: CR ." HELLO WORLD" . where CR does a charachter return and a line feed, ." tells it to pretty much ignore whatever is input, and save it, and then " tells it to stop ignoring. The . then is the same as the print command in basic. Once you enter that line and hit return it would dump out HELLO WORLDOK because I didn't put a space after world, and OK because after every non-errored line entered it says OK. For a named definition, : HW ( PRINTS HELLO WORD) CR ." HELLO WORLD" . ; would work. The : means start colon definition, the ( ) is for a comment, the rest is the same as before, aside from the ; which ends the colon definition.
My current plans for it are to bring the parallel header to the front of the case and to get a floppy interface for it. Probably will try to do it over the summer.
So, about two weeks ago a guy to ask if I was interested in some old equipment he was getting rid of, of course I'd take it so I said sure and later he swung by the house with a bunch of old fairly generic PC stuff, mostly cables and basic cards. He said he'd be by again soon with a bunch more, once he saw how positive my reaction to the old equipment was. Most of it was pretty standard, several new Etherlink II cards, couple PCI video cards, baby AT mobo with a Pent Pro, laplink setups, ya know- basic 90s PC stuff.
About a week after that, three days ago, he came by with something really cool. A little, and I mean little, this thing is 2" thick, 4" wide, and 6" long, black box and a manual. A big manual. The box had a single RS232 db25 port and a reset switch (and an external PSU, rated at 9v 300ma). However I've since added a power switch and made a socket/plug for the power supply so it's detachable. According to the guy, and the manual, this is an RSC-FORTH, or Rockwell Single Chip FORTH development/hobbyist board. According to the manual and stack of papers I got with it (one of them being an ad) say it's from around fall 83, and was made by a company called Rockwell International. It is an entirely self sustained computer, complete with parallel-type headers and a low-level floppy drive interface. The processor is a Rockwell R65F11, a 1MHz, 40 pin, chip based off the 6502 with some enhancements. Ones I see straight off are that it has room for 3K ROM and 192B RAM, as well as a direct TTL based serial interface, to bring it to RS232C specs you just need a handful of discrete parts, all of which are on my board so it works as normal serial. My board also has a power regulator on it, so anything from 6 to 10v DC works. In the 3K of ROM is a very basic, but still usable, implementation of the FORTH development language. Basic, but still very usable.
To make it more usable, there are three chip sockets, two of mine are filled: one 2K RAM chip and one ROM. The RAM is a standard CDM6116E2 chip, the ROM is another Rockwell part, R65FR1, running also at 1MHz. It contains the full version of the FORTH development language, dictionary and all. Into the third slot I can put an EEPROM to save applications to, or theoretically 12kB RAM, as the R65F11 supports up to 16kB outside its 192B. To connect to it, you connect any serial terminal/terminal emulator, no null modem adapter needed. It operates at 1200 baud, 7 bits, no parity, 2 stop bits, hardware flow control. I can set it to 9600 baud from software, but since it's text only it's not really sensible. In total there are eight chips, processor, ROM, RAM, two 74xxxx TTL chips for data latches, and a few little discrete chips. The board is blue and exactly 10cm on each side.
The part that makes this little box really usable, though, is the manual. It's probably around 200 pages or so, the original copy was typed on a typewriter and then xeroxed, bound with those plastic rings. This thing is just absolutely packed with FORTH theory, low level hardware info on the R65F11, loads of code examples, schematics, troubleshooting, etc. When I get the time I really need to take it apart and scan it all, it's priceless. Without it the RSC-FORTH box would be pretty useless.
Here's pictures of the case/board (and some video cards I also got from him) - http://picasaweb.google.com/john8520/RSCFORTHVideoCards
And the front panel after I added the switch and whatnot (dig the labels!) - http://i28.tinypic.com/2z7ik5y.jpg
And here's a scan (not mine, but I own the document) of an add for it - http://i29.tinypic.com/15z1nyr.jpg
So far I'm having a lot of fun programming and fiddling with it, it's a seriously cool little computer, definitely the smallest and most powerful, considering its age. Very easy to use, you can program it in two ways too, either program it line by line, or you can create one big (or several big, linked together) named operations. An example of code for each, respectively could be: CR ." HELLO WORLD" . where CR does a charachter return and a line feed, ." tells it to pretty much ignore whatever is input, and save it, and then " tells it to stop ignoring. The . then is the same as the print command in basic. Once you enter that line and hit return it would dump out HELLO WORLDOK because I didn't put a space after world, and OK because after every non-errored line entered it says OK. For a named definition, : HW ( PRINTS HELLO WORD) CR ." HELLO WORLD" . ; would work. The : means start colon definition, the ( ) is for a comment, the rest is the same as before, aside from the ; which ends the colon definition.
My current plans for it are to bring the parallel header to the front of the case and to get a floppy interface for it. Probably will try to do it over the summer.