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 computing, 8-bit microprocessor that was desi ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

. The AIM-65 is essentially an expanded

KIM-1 The KIM-1, short for ''Keyboard Input Monitor'', is a small MOS Technology 6502, 6502-based single-board computer developed and produced by MOS Technology, MOS Technology, Inc. and launched in 1976. It was very successful in that period, due to ...

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 address, memory locations on a computer, with options to load and save memory contents from/to secondary storage. Some f ...

BASIC Basic or BASIC may refer to: Science and technology * BASIC, a computer programming language * Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base * Basic access authentication, in HTTP Entertainment * Basic (film), ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film ...

interpreter, assembler, Pascal, PL/65, and Forth development system. Available hardware included a

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a 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 with a ...

controller and a

backplane A backplane or backplane system is a group of electrical connectors in parallel with each other, so that each pin of each connector is linked to the same relative pin of all the other connectors, forming a computer bus. It is used to connect s ...

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 A disassembler is a computer program that translates machine language into assembly language—the inverse operation to that of an assembler. The output of disassembly is typically formatted for human-readability rather than for input to an asse ...

, 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 A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user-friendly alternativ ...

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 Thermal printing (or direct thermal printing) is a digital printing process which produces a printed image by passing paper with a thermochromic coating, commonly known as thermal paper, over a print head consisting of tiny electrically hea ...

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 In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

. The machine featured dual

cassette tape The Compact Cassette, also commonly called a cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog audio, analog magnetic tape recording format for Sound recording and reproduction, audio recording and playback. Invented by L ...

controls. This made it possible to write large assembly programs using the

two-pass assembler In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

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 on the second tape, also using start/stop motor control. Being able to avoid storing code in RAM made it possible to save a lot of 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 A promenade dance or prom is a formal dance party for graduating high school students at the end of the school year. Students participating in the prom will typically vote for a ''prom king'' and ''prom queen''. Other students may be honored ...

burner and floppy drives. Rockwell was also a pioneer in solid-state storage devices, introducing "

bubble memory Bubble memory is a type of non-volatile memory, non-volatile computer memory that uses a thin film of a magnetic material to hold small magnetized areas, known as ''bubbles'' or ''domains'', each storing one bit of data. The material is arrange ...

" non-volatile expansion boards in 1980. Micro Technology Unlimited (MTU) made a "Visible Memory" card in 1978 that worked with the

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

microcassette The Microcassette (often written generically as microcassette) is an audio storage medium, introduced by Olympus in 1969. It has the same width of magnetic tape as the Compact Cassette but in a cassette roughly one quarter the size. By using ...

s, but definitive versions have two 8" floppy disk drives. In the late 1970s, the Rockwell AIM-65 and its successor, System 65, became the first computers used to board a float in the

Tournament of Roses Parade A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses: # One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentr ...

. Cal Poly universities wrote their own animation control language to control hydraulic and motor

actuator An actuator is a machine element, component of a machine that produces force, torque, or Displacement (geometry), displacement, when an electrical, Pneumatics, pneumatic or Hydraulic fluid, hydraulic input is supplied to it in a system (called an ...

s 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 geography of Halloween, observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christianity, Western Christian f ...

show near

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, U.S.

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 letter row of the keyboard: . The QWERTY design is based on a layout included in the Sh ...

keyboard * 20 character

alphanumeric Alphanumericals or alphanumeric characters are any collection of number characters and letters in a certain language. Sometimes such characters may be mistaken one for the other. Merriam-Webster suggests that the term "alphanumeric" may often ...

LED A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. The color of the light (corresp ...

display (16 segments) * Integrated 20 character thermal printer * 20 mA current-loop serial interface (can be adapted to

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such as a compu ...

) * Expansion connector * Application connector with 6522 VIA chips * 4 KB

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* 5 sockets for 4 KB

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EPROM An EPROM (rarely EROM), or erasable programmable read-only memory, is a type of programmable read-only memory (PROM) integrated circuit, chip that retains its data when its power supply is switched off. Computer memory that can retrieve stored d ...

chips

Reception

Compute! ''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', is 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. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

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 initially developed by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. It has b ...

, simplified where possible in order to adapt to the limited processing environment afforded by the 6502 (64k memory for instance). Some models had Forth as the built-in language.

Emulation

AIM-65 can be emulated using the MESS Emulator. But that emulation lacks printer support. Also, the Sysinfo.dat file states that "we would suffer from support for intelligent terminals as test equipment."Sysinfo.dat file for MESS Emulator
/ref>

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