The Rockwell AIM-65 computer is a
development computer introduced in 1978 based on the
MOS Technology 6502
The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small t ...
microprocessor. The AIM-65 is essentially an expanded
KIM-1
The KIM-1, short for ''Keyboard Input Monitor'', is a small 6502-based single-board computer developed and produced by MOS Technology, Inc. and launched in 1976. It was very successful in that period, due to its low price (thanks to the inexp ...
computer. Available software included a line-oriented
machine code monitor
A machine code monitor ( machine language monitor) is software that allows a user to enter commands to view and change memory locations on a computer, with options to load and save memory contents from/to secondary storage. Some full-featured m ...
,
BASIC
BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...
interpreter,
assembler
Assembler may refer to:
Arts and media
* Nobukazu Takemura, avant-garde electronic musician, stage name Assembler
* Assemblers, a fictional race in the ''Star Wars'' universe
* Assemblers, an alternative name of the superhero group Champions of ...
,
Pascal,
PL/65
The Rockwell AIM-65 computer is a development computer introduced in 1978 based on the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor. The AIM-65 is essentially an expanded KIM-1 computer. Available software included a line-oriented machine code monitor, ...
, and
FORTH
Forth or FORTH may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''forth'' magazine, an Internet magazine
* ''Forth'' (album), by The Verve, 2008
* ''Forth'', a 2011 album by Proto-Kaw
* Radio Forth, a group of independent local radio stations in Scotla ...
development system. Available hardware included a
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
controller and a backplane for expansion.
Features
Rockwell advertised the $375 AIM-65, with 1K RAM, as an "easy, inexpensive
omputer... for learning, designing, work or just fun".
Standard software included the system console monitor software in ROM, called Advanced Interactive Monitor. It featured an assembler, disassembler, setting and viewing memory and registers, starting execution of other programs and more. Single stepping was made possible using
non-maskable interrupt
In computing, a non-maskable interrupt (NMI) is a hardware interrupt that standard interrupt-masking techniques in the system cannot ignore. It typically occurs to signal attention for non-recoverable hardware errors. Some NMIs may be masked, but ...
(NMI). The command prompt was the less-than sign "<", and on receiving a single character command, it added this input character and the greater-than sign ">". If the thermal printer was turned on, this would be output on a single line. The monitor included a number of service routines that could be accessed and used by a user's program to control I/O and code execution, and was fully documented, including source code.
The machine featured dual cassette tape control. This made it possible to write large assembly programs using the
two-pass assembler ROM. Source code in text was written twice consecutively to the input tape, and then the assembler, which could start/stop the input cassette tape using motor control was invoked. During the first pass the symbol table was built and stored in RAM. During the second pass symbols would be translated and code written out to the second tape, also using start/stop motor control. Being able to avoid storing code in RAM made it possible to save much space. It was however, still important to keep the symbols list short since RAM size was often no more than 4
KB.
In 1981, Rockwell introduced an improved model with a 40 character display as the AIM-65/40. An industrial chassis version was known as the System 65 and included a PROM burner and floppy drives. Rockwell was also a pioneer in solid-state storage devices, introducing "bubble memory" non-volatile expansion boards about 1980.
Micro Technology Unlimited (MTU) made a "Visible Memory" card in 1978 that worked with the KIM-1 and AIM-65 computers, providing
raster graphics
upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...
display capability. MTU also made the first real time music synthesizer for a microcomputer; it worked with the KIM-1 and AIM-65, and featured a
DAC with software providing 4 voices of
wavetable-lookup synthesis.
In Spain they were distributed by Comelta. This company made various card expansions:
*CR-106 8 Kbytes of RAM
*CR-119 RAM / ROM / PROM expansion
*CR-120 Universal programming
*CR-115 Microcassette controller(two units)
*CR-113 Video controller
*CR-401 Board Bus Extension(Standard S-64)
Comelta assembled all the options in a single box to produce a new computer, the Comelta Drac-1. The first prototype used microcassetes, but definitive versions have two 8" floppy disk drives.
In the late 1970s, the Rockwell AIM-65, and successor System 65 became the first computers used on board a float in the Tournament of Roses Parade. Cal Poly Universities wrote their own animation control language to control hydraulic and motor actuators on floats for many years. In 2003, some of these 27-year-old computers were still in use controlling various displays and creatures at a high tech
Halloween
Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve) is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints' Day. It begins the observanc ...
show near
Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria is an independent city (United States), independent city in the northern region of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia, United States. It lies on the western bank of the Potomac River approximately south of Downto ...
, U.S.A.
Technical specifications
* Built-in full-sized
QWERTY
QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created f ...
keyboard
* 20 character alphanumeric LED display (16 segments)
* Integrated 20 character thermal printer
* 20 mA
current-loop serial interface (can be adapted to RS-232)
* Expansion connector
* Application connector with
6522 VIA chip
* 4 KB
RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* ...
* 5 sockets for 4 KB
ROM
Rom, or ROM may refer to:
Biomechanics and medicine
* Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient
* Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac
* ...
/
EPROM
An EPROM (rarely EROM), or erasable programmable read-only memory, is a type of programmable read-only memory (PROM) chip that retains its data when its power supply is switched off. Computer memory that can retrieve stored data after a power s ...
chips
Reception
''
Compute!
''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', was an American home computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994. Its origins can be traced to 1978 in Len Lindsay's ''PET Gazette'', one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET ...
'' stated that the monitor was by itself almost worth the price of the AIM-65. It concluded that the computer was "an excellent value at the $375 needed for minimum configurations".
Programming
''PL/65'' was a
programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language.
The description of a programming ...
designed and implemented by Rockwell International for the AIM-65.
It is based on a mix of
ALGOL
ALGOL (; short for "Algorithmic Language") is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in 1958. ALGOL heavily influenced many other languages and was the standard method for algorithm description used by the ...
and
PL/I
PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. I ...
, simplified where possible in order to adapt to the limited processing environment afforded by the 6502 (64k memory for instance).
Emulation
AIM-65 can be emulated using
MESS Emulator. But that emulation lacks printer support. Also Sysinfo.dat file states that "Would suffer from support for intelligent terminals as tty equipment."
Sysinfo.dat file for MESS Emulator
/ref>
See also
* Microprocessor development board
A microprocessor development board is a printed circuit board containing a microprocessor and the minimal support logic needed for an electronic engineer or any person that wants to become acquainted with the microprocessor on the board and to lea ...
* Elektor Junior Computer
The Elektor Junior Computer was a simple 6502-based microprocessor development board published in the 1980s in the Dutch, German and later French, Spanish, British and Indian versions of '' Elektor/Elektuur'', in the form of a series of articles, ...
* SYM-1
The SYM-1 is a single board "trainer" computer produced by Synertek Systems in 1975. It was designed by Ray Holt. Originally called the VIM-1 (Versatile Input Monitor), that name was later changed to SYM-1.
The SYM-1 is a close copy of the pop ...
References
External links
Rockwell AIM-65 computer
at oldcomputers.net
at Old Computer Museum
AIM-65
at Obsolete Computer Museum
DRAC-1
at Old Computers ES Museum
{{Authority control
Early microcomputers