Kim / Commie keypads

Yes, they made quite a number of KIM-4's as well as some of the KIM-2 and KIM-3 boards, of which I have one of each now, if I didn't, in a moment of madness, toss them while having an "easter-egg" hunt in the basement. I don't remember much about the KIM-1, never having owned one myself, but I did build a prototype DRAM board (32K) for the thing for a friend at one time. I even had a 32K DRAM board with the DRAM (4027) array on it built up with a wirewrap area on the remainder of the board. That was when 4116's were still expensive but everybody was replacing their 4027's with them. It happened that the friend for whom I built up the memory circuit was the guy who ran the PCB house that made my prototypes, so he could make up whatever he felt like doing. IIRC, the memory map was divide in half, with RAM in the bottom and ROM and I/O in the top half. That allowed for some expansion. The KIM-3 and KIM-2 boards used 21L02's and were made here in the Denver area by Monolithic Systems. They clearly bore the MOS-Technology Logo, and had the on-board regulators that were required for the KIM BUS. The fact they designed this stuff and had it made up suggests they had other plans for the KIM-1 than merely a DEMO board. However, the shape of these boards suggests that their design team was somewhat lacking in grey matter. The bus connectors on the KIM-2 and KIM-3 boards were centered in their nominally 8" x 10" size, and would certainly NOT line up conveniently with the connectors on the KIM-1 for any sort of well-, or even badly,- thought-out packaging arrangement. I've never looked at a KIM-4 to see what its configuration suggests. I think all this suggests that there were oppposing forces at work at Commodore, and you know what they say about "too many cooks" ... Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ross Archer" <dogbert(a)mindless.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2001 5:18 AM Subject: Re: Kim / Commie keypads