Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!utrcgw.utc.COM!RAYBRO%UTRC From: RAYBRO%UTRC@utrcgw.utc.COM ("William R Brohinsky", ay) Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: RE: Re: Cost of Forth Chips Message-ID: <8908231646.AA26195@jade.berkeley.edu> Date: 22 Aug 89 14:10:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Forth Interest Group International List Organization: The Internet Lines: 59 I am in complete agreement with the sentiment that the time has come for the FORTH chip makers to put out boards. Look at what the KIM-1 did for MosTechnologies (which is now the captive foundry for Commodore). The 6502 was a real johnny-come-lately in the field, with the 8080 and the 6800 THERE for some time. The number of engineers who could get a KIM-1 (for $350, when I got mine) was large because MT committed themselves to mass producing a board for which there was no demand...at first. These boards ended up in finished products, mastering prototypes, and in general, fostering a love for the 6502 that raised it to equal usage with the intel 8-bit chips in consumer applications. At one time, I read in numerous tech mags (EDN, EP, Electronic Design, amoung others) that the 2 most used chips were 8080/8085 and 6502, the former by companies who had no philosophical problems with getting all their parts from off shore, and the latter by those who wanted all their parts from the USA. I cannot verify this, but I can say that my experience with the 6502 spoiled me against the intel chips (to this day) and prepared me for the 68000, and that none of this would have been possible without the KIM-1. For those of you who are too young to remember... The Kim-1 was a single-board computer in the finest sense of the term. It had a hex keyboard, 6 7-segment displays (4 for the 16-bit address, 2 for 8-bit data) which displayed numbers and the first 5 letters for Hex in the following manner: A b C d E F. It had the 6502, and a pair of RAM-ROM- TIMER chips (my memory gets foggy on these) with the KIM (Keyboard Input Monitor) software in the rom. The board's buffering was minimal, but as Hal Chamberlin prooved, the 6502 unbuffered drove more memory than a common (S-100) 8080 support bus could handle buffered! The timers were pressed into service to run a cassette interface (1200hz-2400hz nrz, I believe). Some third party developers got into the act and made add-on boards for the KIM-1 bus, and made some software for it (like PLEASE, which gave you the ability to banner messages on the 6 displays in an almost-readable-alphanumeric 7-segment output!). Like I said, I got this in 1976, for $350. It needed a power supply, which I built from a kit. It came with two manuals, one of which was vexing in its opacity to the uninitiated (me). But it allowed me to "bootstrap" myself by trial and error and a lot of independant study, so I am now desigining hardware, programming, troubleshooting the lot, and making a good living. This means more to me than lower chip prices (which it engendered). It means more designers who used the chip, who might never have started! The going price of an 8080-based computer in 1976 was $1200 or so, and that didn't include the cost of a terminal. They were heavy boat anchors of boxes, with heavily buffered backplanes, lots of slots for the many boards needed to make them work, and rows of front panel switches to talk to them, and rows of front panel lights to listen to them...I'd never have gotten a start! Maybe something with all the I/O (terminal, no matter how simple, and display) memory and processor would be too expensive for a forth chip, and maybe noone sells un-boxed boards anymore, but a KIM-1 style Forth chip demonstrator board which could have the same usefulness that the KIM-1 showed would help market the chips AND help grow the programmers and users to buy them. I think it's time for me to get off the soapbox... -raybro These opinions were formed after years of experience in forming half-baked opinions. Could they yet be termed fully-baked?