KIM-1 Boards of the Past

[glitch]

I finally herded together the extant pictures of the KIM-1s I've had in the past and did a writeup:

http://www.glitchwrks.com/2022/09/18/kim1-boards-past

TL;DR is that during college I found a KIM-1 in an employer's warehouse. Later, I found a box with five more! These were all Virginia Tech surplus, and one of them is likely the first KIM-1 used for classroom instruction there. I'd intended to sell some of them, since who needs six, right? Unfortunately, I was forced to sell all of them, including the one I'd intended to keep for myself, due to economic/financial situations after graduation.

I've never seen anyone post about these particular machines, and I haven't seen them exhibited at VCF East, VCF Midwest, or HOPE. None of the sellers contacted me about them after the sale concluded. Is anyone here the owner of one of these particular KIM-1s? Do you know the owner? Did you use KIM-1s while at Virginia Tech? Please let me know!

[Dr Jefyll]

glitch wrote:

I finally herded together the extant pictures of the KIM-1s I've had in the past

Eye candy!

[fachat]

Unfortunately mine is not one of yours. It's a Rev G.

And it has some seriously bad soldering on the underside that I am going to fix at some point....

[glitch]

fachat wrote:

Unfortunately mine is not one of yours. It's a Rev G.

And it has some seriously bad soldering on the underside that I am going to fix at some point....

Yeah, that's what I've got now, a Commodore branded Rev G. Works the same, and no ROR bug like you get with some of the no-rev boards...but also not the same

[BillG]

glitch wrote:

I finally herded together the extant pictures of the KIM-1s I've had in the past and did a writeup:

http://www.glitchwrks.com/2022/09/18/kim1-boards-past

Very off topic, but...

I followed that link to your site where I found information about the OSI Challenger III.

http://www.glitchwrks.com/2019/07/30/47 ... -second-c3

The 510 CPU board sports three processors: 6502, Z80 and 6800.

There was a version of CP/M made for the Z80.

Do you know if anybody got FLEX to run on the 6800?

I know next to nothing about that system. Did the three processors share the same RAM? Surely they did not each have its own memory in those days.

I wonder whether the 6502 can load the FLEX system image into memory then transfer control to the 6800.

I disassembled the 68A ROM but it does not tell me much.

[glitch]

I don't know if anyone has ported FLEX, but it should certainly be possible. With the CP/M versions, they of course boot in 6502 mode, but more interestingly, kick over to 6502 mode for the disk I/O routines! On the OSI, the floppy controller is very...primitive. It's basically a 6850 ACIA and some one shots, plus a PIA to twiddle and read status and control lines.

The CPUs do share RAM. There's an option which *does* have its own dedicated RAM, the 460Z and 560Z "Processor Lab" boards. The 560Z is covered on my site. By default, the 560Z supports the IM6100 (PDP-8 on a chip) and Z80, but has uncommitted space for adding other CPUs.

The OSI stuff is pretty neat, 6502 is definitely the main CPU supported, but the 510 CPU board was definitely used as a real multi-CPU product!

[BillG]

Before I continue with the off topicality, I obtained a KIM-1 from a kind gentleman who was downsizing.

I do not know which revision it was, but he said that it was not working. I have not gotten around to diagnosing it. He built a wooden case for it containing a power supply and some expansion, memory as I recall. The forward top of the case flips up to reveal the keypad and display. I jokingly refer to it as the "world's first laptop computer." If I added some kind of video generation and an LCD panel, the meme would be complete!

Back to the C-III, I asked Dave of OSIWeb about the hardware and he did not know specifics off the top of his head. I need to do a thorough search of the site in case the information is there. Namely,

* Can the 6800 directly access the disk hardware in case I wrote native drivers?

* How to pass control back and forth between the 6800 and the 6502 if I pursued the approach used by CP/M.

* Is there an OSI emulator which implements the 6800 as well as the 6502? It would be nice to also do the Z80 for CP/m.