During Hackaday’s short trip to Czech, we were lucky enough to run into someone who had recently had one of his projects featured on Hackaday. It’s [Martin]’s multi-target IDE for 8-bit CPUs, written entirely in JavaScript, and a full development suite for anything with a 6502, 6800, 6809, Z80, 8080, and 8085. [Martin] was kind enough to sit down and give us the scoop on why he’s interested in old computers, and why he developed his 8-bit IDE project, ASM80.
[Martin] grew up in the days of computer magazines, and originally wanted to build his own computer. That plan didn’t work out, but his parents did get him a Speccy in 1986, but the love of old hardware is still there. Over the years, this evolved into computer collecting, with the old ZX Spectrum, an Commodore 64, ORICs, and Acorns rounding out his collection. As we learned at the Computeum, there the middle of Europe had computers that just aren’t seen on the English-speaking Internet, and [Martin]’s collection is no exception.
In addition to doing some very cool stuff for some very old computers, [Martin] also donated something to the Hackaday Hackaspace. It’s a PMI-80, a single board computer made for university computer science students, and basically a KIM-1, but based on a Czechoslovak clone of the Intel 8080 made by Tesla. There is 1k of RAM and 1k of ROM on this board, a calculator keypad, and a few seven segment displays. For the time, it was a great ‘student’ computer, and not really rare in Europe, but this is the first one I’ve seen on my side of the Atlantic.
You can see some pics of the PMI-80 below with [Martin]’s interview. [Martin] also promised to write-up a short history of classic central european computers, a subject there isn’t much written about in the anglosphere. We’ll post a link to that when he finishes that up.
Why doesn’t this website scale to my screen?
It scales to the blinking LED on my Arduino POV just fine.
Oh, PMI-80!
Few years ago I made “remade” of PMI-80 with mostly original components (no emulators or other boring stuff) in smaller form factor https://picasaweb.google.com/111890741167251011072/PMI80
Single 5V supply, BTW.
Nice!
Could you provide a schematic diagram please? I have recently gotten my hands on some old tesla mhb8080a microprocesors and i would like to build a simple computer like the one you buildt. Please excuse my bad English, i am from Czech republic so it is not my mother tongue.
I like this kind of stuff, we in North America (and the west in general) never got to see, stuff behind the iron curtain was a mystery and now we get to see it.
I hope you had chance to see IQ151 – bulky, heavy, overheating beast with the worst keyboard ever (even ZX Spectrum was ergonomic compared to this) and with reset button where normally Esc key is :)
Here is a (sadly brief) Wiki (with photos) of the IQ151
http://www.ask.com/wiki/IQ_151?o=2801&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com