Vintage Chess Programming

[abik]

The MicroKIM, a KIM-1 semi-replica for sale, kit or assembled.

Thanks for this link Steven! I think I just found something to put on my wishlist

[sje]

The MicroKIM, a KIM-1 semi-replica for sale, kit or assembled.

Thanks for this link Steven! I think I just found something to put on my wishlist

Vince also sells an Apple I Replica as both a kit and as an assembled product. You can even get a copy of Steve Wozniak's handwritten notes.

The 6502 is/was likely the best eight bit CPU for chess programming; its page zero addressing mode was like having 256 registers. The main drawback of the 6502 was a general lack of 16 bit operations. To remedy this, Wozniak wrote a little routine called "Sweet 16" that emulated a simple 16 bit calculator on a 6502 and this code was included in the ROM of every Apple II product.

[abik]

The MicroKIM, a KIM-1 semi-replica for sale, kit or assembled.

Thanks for this link Steven! I think I just found something to put on my wishlist

Vince also sells an Apple I Replica as both a kit and as an assembled product. You can even get a copy of Steve Wozniak's handwritten notes.

The MicroKim has been ordered from Vince. Can't wait

I anticipation I have extended my 65xx cross-assembler to support the archaic "paper tape format" to use the Kim's terminal interface.

[sje]

The MicroKim has been ordered from Vince. Can't wait

I anticipation I have extended my 65xx cross-assembler to support the archaic "paper tape format" to use the Kim's terminal interface.

The MicroKIM needs an RS-232 connection for serial I/O, so you'll need a machine with an old style serial port or a USB/RS-232 converter dongle; I use the latter. You may have to supply a DC wall wart power source as well. A lot of the software Vince supplies is Windows only, so having a Windows machine can be helpful.

You'll see that the MicroKIM LED digits are about four times brighter than they need to be. This may be part of the reason that the on-board voltage regulator gets very warm in operation.

Getting the 32 KB memory expansion board is a good idea.

[abik]

The MicroKIM needs an RS-232 connection for serial I/O, so you'll need a machine with an old style serial port or a USB/RS-232 converter dongle;

My Micro-KIM arrived today!

I did some initial experimentation with my 6502 cross-assembler and was happy that the paper tape format l recently added could be uploaded directly to the device without any problems.

What better first program to write than "HELLO WORLD" (except only HELLO fits on the display)? It was fun figuring out how to control the display using low level 6502 programming.