Projects: Apple I Replica

So last august I came across and bought an Apple I Replica kit, from Briel Computers. It’s a very cool little kit which includes a smallish PCB, a handful of components, all the ICs required (including the 6502 microprocessor and a Parallax microcontroller) and very easy instructions. The EEPROM has BASIC and an Assembler already in, so once you assemble the whole thing it’s ready to use. The schematics and manuals are included on a CD, although the package on the website is slightly more recent.

I had a couple of mishaps (dry solder joints, couldn’t find a suitable power supply, plugged in the ROM in the wrong slot). But nothing that destroyed the board, which is a bonus.

See all the steps in pictures in the Flickr set.

Next: make a hardware interface to connect a PC to the ASCII keyboard socket. I want to be able to type on the PC and send the keystrokes to the board, as if it was receiving it from a keyboard. The point being that I would type the programs in vi or notepad and “copy/paste” the code to the Apple I Replica. I plan to use an Atmel microcontroller to listen to the PC on USB or serial and simulate the keystroke for the ASCII keyboard port. Details on the (proper) ASCII keyboard can be found here.