Nostaliga: Emma II and the desire to make a computer
This article starts a series, documenting my journey in making my own homebrew computer.
Back in ye olde times of 1994 I attended vocational secondary school as a student of electronics, and during that time, I was introduced to the wonderful lady Emma II. Emma was a "trainer" system based on the MOS Technologies 6502 CPU, in many ways related to the somewhat more commonly known KIM demonstration and development system. This sparked a love for quirky 8-bit computer systems that's still with me today.
MOS 6502 CPU, image CC BY-SA Dirk Oppelt / Wikipedia
http://retro.hansotten.nl/6502-sbc/emma-by-l-j-technical-systems/
http://www.anf.nildram.co.uk/beebcontrol/arms/atlas/emma.html
Using Emma's (fairly flakey) hexadecimal keyboard, we were set to program the 6502 using opcodes and raw data bytes. To solve the task, we had to design our programs using flow charts drawn on paper, and then translate the flowcharts to pseudo-code. With an idea of what the programming should look like, we sat down studying the manuals for the 6502 CPU internal structure, how it operated, and what it's view of memory and the world looked like. Next the manual for the Emma II was examined in detail, to learn how what we now knew about the CPU was used to implement a full single board computer.[1][2][3][4]
The 6502 trainer Emma II by LJ Electronics. CC BY-NC-SA Hans Otten (http://retro.hansotten.nl)
Armed with oodles of new information, our next task was to transform our flow-charts and pseudo-code into something Emma could understand. And that meant hand-translating our concept, first into Assembly mnemonics, and next to "hand-compile" our ASM-code into 6502 opcodes. The joy when our "traffic light simulator" finally worked! The frustration when our "lift controller" never worked... The satisfaction of coding up a lottery-number-picker of our own design, and having it work on the second try! Details such as zero-page, indirect and immediate addressing and the importance of understand addressing modes are still (if somewhat ratteling) stuck in my head 🙂 And I will easily claim that the experience of having to opcode-program a computer system has given a solid foundation for my later work and understanding in the field of information tech.
Even if we (naturally) were using more modern and advanced computer systems for our day-to-day tasks, and the Internet was about to explode (actually, my 2nd-year project in spring of 1995 was internet-enabling the school), the raw nature of the 8-bit computers fascinated me, and the simplicity of such a system had me thinking "This is something I can design and build from".
Alas, I had to leave Emma at school. But a short time later, I came in possession of two 6502 CPU chips, an 8086, a weird thing named 80186, and also an even weirder named thing called a Zilog Z80. These parts rattled about in my parts bin, and my head for many long years. My hope, and intention, was to build a computer from at least one of these. A fairly simple 8 bit system, with RAM, ROM and some form of communication on a higher level than the sponge-like flaky keys of Emma was the whole "design".
I am happy and proud to tell that I have now completed that task! In a series of articles, I will tell about the 2-year journey that lead to a fully functioning 8-bit computer, not at all built on the 6502 🙂