Bugs wrote:

My first was the SYM II, an improvement over the first kit computer.
The 6502 chip provided 256 controller ports instead of 8. ANyone else
out there still have a SYM?
Bugs


Since you asked....


I kept my SYM II "single board computer" until 2002 when I finally began
cleaning house and sold it amd it's paperwork on e-Bay for an
unbelievable (to me)price to a guy in Scandinavia.

I aquired it when the boss I was working for then sent me two a two day
cram course to "learn microprocessors". The SYM II was what the teaching
tool, each student got one, and when we "graduated" the instructor let
us keep our SYM IIs. (I had to buld my own power supply though; that
they didn't let us take away from the course.)

I had a lot of fun and learning experiences with that SYM II (So named
because it was sold by Symatek {sp?}, the then second source maker of
the 6502 microprocessor chip in used.) I suppose they did that as a way
of helping develop the market for their products.)

By the time I retired it and moved onto my first Apple II I'd "pimped it
out" with an auxillary memory board (IIRC think it was a whole big 4K of
additional static RAM.) and the Basic interpreter ROMs Symatek sold for it.

I bought and built a Heathkit CRT terminal to interface with the SYM so
I could learn to program in Basic.

My "printer" was a surplus IBM selectric typewriter which must have been
a printer in someone else's system because it had about 8 solenoids in
it pulling on the right things to let you make it print over wires. I
remember developing my own "ASCII to solenoid" translation table and
burning it into an EPROM, using just as a burner the SYM itself, a
socket and three 9 volt batteries in series.

The damn thing worked well enough so that for a year or so I used it
with a Basic program to punch out Medicaid claim forms for SWMBO's
fledgeling practice.

I remember poring over every issue of "Micro" magazine, a journal
devoted to 6502 hobby computing, which included the SYM II and the
slightly earlier and less sophisticated KIM single board computer. They
published pages of programs printed in hex you could use on those machines.

I sold my stack of Micro magazines on eBay about the same time as I sold
the SYM II, again at a price higher than I would have believed.

Geez, and to think that was close to state of the art in home computing
"only" 30 years ago. All I have left to remind me of it now are my
memories and my homemade EPROM eraser, just a UV closthes dryer
"germicide bulb" and a series wirewound resistor mounted inside a little
inverted cocoa tin with a doorbell transformer screwed to the top of it.

Now, if any of you guys know who'd want a bunch of Apple II stuff in my
basement I think I'm finally ready to break my emotional ties to, lemee
know. G

Thanks for the mammaries,

Jeff
--
Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"As long as there are final exams, there will be prayer in public
schools"