Getting the KIM-1 to talk to my Mac

by jgrahamc on 7/25/2025, 3:12:19 PM with 10 comments

  • by JKCalhoun on 7/28/2025, 6:19:29 PM

    If you wanted to play around with retro hardware the KIM-1 is a fine machine. Actual KIM-1's go for $1K or so on eBay, but fortunately there are a few clone kits out there. For the most part too they use the same chip set as the original.

    I have both the PAL-1 [1] and PAL-2 [2] kits and enjoy them both. (For the price difference, I would recommend the PAL-1 if you are just wanting to play around with a retro 6502 computer.)

    There are even online KIM-1 emulators if you can figure them out [3][4].

    The best jumping off point though is probably Hans' report computer pages [5].

    [1] https://www.tindie.com/products/kim1/pal-1-a-mos-6502-powere...

    [2] https://www.tindie.com/products/kim1/pal-2-a-mos-6502-powere...

    [3] https://maksimkorzh.github.io/KIM-1/

    [4] https://maksimkorzh.github.io/KIM-1/

    [5] http://retro.hansotten.nl/6502-sbc/kim-1-manuals-and-softwar...

  • by criddell on 7/28/2025, 5:53:47 PM

    This is really cool.

    My first computer was a TI-99/4a but the computer I really wanted was an Atari 800. Years later I finally got an Atari, an Atari ST, and I loved that machine.

    So many times I've had eBay open with some vintage computer on the screen and my mouse hovering over buy-it-now, but I just can't do it. Most recently it was a TI-99/4a with a fully loaded peripheral expansion box that I couldn't afford in 1983.

    I'm not into retro gaming (they are unforgiving and often not very fun) and I can't think of anything else to do with it. I've thought about some basic home automation tasks, but these old machines draw so much power it feels bad. So I know it would become décor (or as my grandmother would say - just another damned thing to dust. She wasn't into tchotchkes).

    I sometimes think about how wonderful it would have been if Atari, and Be, and Amiga, and all the other 80s machines had survived and we had a diverse market of computing ideas. I suspect though that the end would have been the same. The Electron people would have showed up and paved over everything unique and interesting in each of these machines.

  • by tonyarkles on 7/28/2025, 9:19:29 PM

    Huh, that record format on the paper tape is almost identical to the Intel Hex format that still unfortunately gets used a bunch in embedded systems. All it's missing is a 1-byte "record type" field and it uses ";" instead of ":".

    Also while confirming that I discovered that the Intel Hex format was standardized in 1973... so right around the same time as this KIM-1.