Hi! New guy here!
I've been absolutely enamored with the AIM-65 recently, and seeing as it uses relatively common components, I was wondering if anyone had built one? Obviously you wouldn't have the original keyboard and printer, but those could be replaced with modern counterparts. So has anyone seen something like this before? I'm not about to reverse-engineer the whole damn thing, but if someone else has done so, I'd be happy to see their work.

I have thought about this as the AIM-65 was a nice machine. It appears to have gotten quite a bit of use in areas like factory automation and probably to some extent software development. ROM's are available for the monitor, BASIC, Pascal, Forth, and PL/65 (not entirely sure what this is, but it was a language developed by Rockwell). It can be expanded with disk drives and display interfaces too.

The schematic is readily available. Prices on ebay for a real AIM-65's are quite high. I looked for a real keyboard and they appear to be scarce and expensive, so an alternative would probably be easier. The display itself is expensive too, but the controller chip appears to be quite easily available. You could modify the design (and ROM) to have a 40 character LCD, they are easy to get. Of course an LCD isn't nearly as cool as the original LED display.

I don't think anyone has done this, like has been done for the Apple 1, but it would be easier than the Apple 1 as I don't think there are any particularly rare chips in the system. Especially if you replace the small RAM's and ROM's with more modern larger ones.

It could be a fun project.

Actually the hard part I think is the display. Finding that 20 character display. It's 5 modules of 4, 16 LED segment characters each.

Looks like it's driven segment by segment, just like the KIM's was.

You can pretty easily find a serial thermal printer today (though the AIMs was not serial -- looking at the schematic, not sure exactly how that worked honestly), and hack in to a keyboard (or make your own -- there's an entire subculture of DIY keyboards right now).

I think you'd be pretty much limited to an LCD for the display today.

With all the keyboard scanning and LED lighting, it's amazing the AIM had any time to do actual computer stuff.

So while you probably can't make an absolute low level clone (since there's no LED segments to drive and the printer is serial), you could make one that's ROM/Monitor equivalent.

It all depends on how 'authentic' you want your machine to be. Do you want it to work the same, or must it also look the same? That original display and printer might be tough to source.

If you just want your machine to work like the AIM, all you really need is a detailed memory map then have at designing it with more modern parts. If you are going to take that route, then upgrading the display to a 4x40 LCD would make it very nice to use, especially in the higher level languages.

Keyboard could be done using Cherry MX (real or fake) key switches and cheap key caps are readily available.

The Apple 1 is only tough as everyone wants period components and a copy of the original layout and BOM. As if that somehow makes the copy more real. To me it doesn't. It's not like computers are like classic cars. Computer's don't have the same 'handling' issues and they can be made to work exactly the same as the original using modern parts to greatly simplify the build.

I always fancied the AIM but never acquired one. I ended up getting a KIM-1 as my first computer then shortly replaced it with an OSI Superboard ... which has recently been cloned here.

_________________
Bill

Actually, it looks like the display modules had internal memory (so they didn't need constant refreshing by the CPU), and the keyboard was controlled by a 6532 RIOT, which provided timer interrupts to allow key scanning at a comparatively slow rate (a negligible CPU load), and also an edge-detect interrupt on PB7 which just happened to be connected to the Escape key (so you only needed to actively scan the keyboard while waiting for input, but could still interrupt a running program). The two 6522 VIAs also present in the machine also provided timers and interrupts.

So not so primitive a machine, by a long shot, compared to something like the ZX81 (which had to halt the CPU while scanning out video).

Ah I see. Well I'm sad to see its not been done. Yeah, I could adapt the schematics and such, but frankly I'd much rather do my own design inspired by it. Maybe a VFD display to replace the LED, or an LCD if cash is tight, and of course the printer. Could get one of them off alibaba, or just salvaged from something from the thrift store.

AdaFruit has printer modules for $50.

It should be quite easy to build a similar machine, as long as you aren't concerned with original software compatibility. Depending on how it's written, patches may be straightforward - or not. You can even give it a load more RAM, by fitting a single 32Kx8 SRAM instead of the eight 1Kx4s the original had space for, and modern EEPROMs are quite easily field-reprogrammable.

RIOTs are no longer in production - functionally they can be replaced with a VIA and an SRAM, but the VIA has a different register map, so any software using it needs to be adjusted. In this case that software would include any routine needing to read the keyboard. If patching original software isn't your cup of tea, you could set up a cheap microcontroller to emulate the RIOT, if you can find one with enough pins. Or make use of the TTY/serial input facility.

The displays will probably also be impossible to find as-is, but 16-segment LED modules *are* still in production, and you "just" need to build a sensible interface to them. With some care, you could make it software-compatible. Again, a cheap microcontroller will doubtless help here. There was an AIM-65/40 which, as well as having more RAM, doubled the size of the display.

The original printer is a weird one. I don't think you'll be able to find a direct equivalent. Modern receipt printers should do the trick though, as long as you also replace the software using it.

If the goal is to get as close to authentic as possible, you can get ones like these:

I see Mouser and Digi-Key don't stock them, but you get the idea. Kingbright is definitely not the only manufacturer. Maxim and others have LED driver ICs that would take care of the strobing.

There are also these Broadcom 5x7 dot-matrix LED displays, four or eight characters per module which fits in an IC socket, and have their own memory and strobing circuitry. You feed them the data for which dots to turn on, meaning you can make any character that a 5x7 matrix can handle, and you can daisychain them, so however many you want can be interfaced with just a few wires, in synchronous-serial. The downside is that they're about $35 per module, and you'd need three (two 8-character and one 4-character) for 20 characters. See a datasheet at https://docs.broadcom.com/docs/AV02-3679EN . I have a couple here (in yellow and green) which I got years ago for a work project we never went through with. I've seen industrial test equipment that uses them.


Search for "POS [point-of-sale] receipt printers". Unfortunately most of them today might be USB.

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http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

Many of them are indeed USB or some variety of wireless, but serial and parallel interface versions also still exist. There's a lot of older POS equipment that doesn't have the new interfaces but is otherwise still in daily use.

Look for Weigh-Tronix mini printers. Used ones have gotten pretty expensive, but if you get lucky, you might still find one in the $40 range. I show one at viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1536 . I have one, plus another, somewhat larger Star DP8340 that takes 4½"-wide paper.

_________________
http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

The AdaFruit printer is TTL serial, 9600 baud: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2751


Yea, those seem a little pricey. If you just need characters rather than dots, you can probably get by with a small LCD.

Yep. LCDs make more sense from every practical standpoint, but some people really get some kind of warm, nostalgic feeling for the LEDs. I see this most on the HP calculator forums. If the point here is to make a copy of the historic AIM-65 computer, with parts that are available today, these LEDs might be a reasonable imitation of the original.

_________________
http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

I've actually still got my original AIM-65. I sprung for the 4K RAM upgrade AND the 8K BASIC. I've still got the schematic and reference cards, but the books are gone.
Unfortunately, when I plugged it in last week it was totally dead.
I don't know if I'll bother fixing it though. I'm thinking more along the lines of a spiritual successor to the AIM-65, like the WDC65C816sxb. I just picked one up on Newegg.com for US$68.16. What with all the headers I was thinking of making Arduino like shields to add an LCD display, keyboard interface, more RAM, maybe a SD card/disk drive. Should be fun.

I'm also looking forward to Ben Eater's building a 6502 (on a breadboard) series.
https://eater.net/6502

(welcome, brionl!)