Intersil 6960 Sampler

 <<< *** >>> ^^^ 

This is, so to say, Scrooge McDucks first self-earned dime. I bought the already completed construction-kit during my studies. What I didn't consider was the need for a Teletype to operate it. But Teletypes were in the production use at that time and accordingly expensive. To use it anyway, I built a small ROM from germanium diodes and connected a calculator keyboard and a 7-segment LED display to the parallel ports of the computer. Thus I started programming in octal machine language (no assembler!) just like others did with the KIM-1 at the same time.

Some technical notes:
The IM 6100 microprocessor used on this board is one of the first microprocessors realized with the CMOS technology. The instruction set is the same than that of the PDP-8.