Printing Kenbak-1 Christmas Star Challenge
Author: Cory Whitesell
Category: Christmas Challenge
System: Kenbak-1 Replica and electric typewriter
Language: Machine Language
Len source code: No source. Source file contains a memory map of the entire 256 bytes of a Kenbak-1
Len exe file: 154 bytes of the 256 bytes available to the machine is used, including 3 registers, program counter, input byte, and output byte reserved by the system. 148 used for code and data
Instructions:
Use the javascript-based emulator at http://www.neocomputer.org/kenbak/kenbak1-JS.html or my personal Windows emulator at https://vps.wagonfort.ca/CCCC/resources/CC%20Kenbak-1%20Sim.exe
Click Memory-loader on the JS emulator or Load Octal on the Windows-based emulator and paste the octal from the source text file
The results viewable are limited to blinking lights. Youll need to view my demo to see how it interacts with the real world using a typewriter
https://youtu.be/eIc5WKhTmp4
Description:
This uses photoresistors embedded in a block of wood and wired to a homemade ribbon connector (cereal box and copper foil tape) to replace the keyboard on an electric typewriter and type a space, a character (a), and return for carriage return/newline.
This gives the Kenbak-1 with only 8 LEDs and 8 switches to interface with the world, the ability to expand its output capabilities to the physical world.
As this solution requires characters to be written left to right and top down, it cannot take advantage of the most compact methods to take advantage of the star geometry.
Instead it steps through a series of data bytes where a number represents the number of characters to be written and which character is written alternates between the printable character and space.
If a zero is encoutered, the return key is pressed
So 5,1,7,1,0 means type 5 spaces, 1 a, 7 spaces, 1 a, return.
Comments:
Apologies for not having a username. Im not finding a means of signing up for an account on your website.