Mega 2560 used to debug a 1978 S-100 Z80 system

Yep I had a SCMP system too. An original 110Baud TTY prototyping version that had 512bytes ROM and 128 bytes of RAM. Bought from National Semiconductor in Stud Road Melbourne for about $75. A large amount for a poor starving uni student.

So going into "old timers brag mode" I used a hardware UART at the time circa 1977 to decode pure binary mentally into hexadecimal from the UART into assembly code. Later I programmed the thing to produce an editor or monitor program as we called them back then, that could edit memory from a software scanned hexadecimal keyboard and show the results on a 6 digit multiplexed display (AAAA DD) and also calculate relative branches all within 256 bytes of EPROM. A 1702A EPROM from Intel if I remember correctly. I actually telephoned Jim Rowe asking him if he was interested in this superior SCMP system, as I could see the MiniSCMP with its toggle switches and binary leds was missing the microprocessor point completely, however it fell on deaf ears.

I later moved on to the Synertech SYM-1, then the BBC 32k Model B, then the ARM based RISC OS, and still the proud owner of a working Strong ARM RISC-OS machine, and finally numerous Raspberry-Pis. I have been forced to use Intel products for most of my later working life, but now I am now very proud to be using mainly ARM based equipment (ie mobile phone and tablets). The SCMP and 6502 lineage of lean and mean CPU performance has been largely responsible.

The BBC 32k Model B left the Apple II for dead. It use of interrupts and relative addressing to access system I/O, language mapping etc was revolutionary. It is a delight to see the recognition of the ARM designers respect for the economy and beautiful symmetry of the Mostek 6502 CPU. The Acorn programmers produced some beautiful code with the 6502, it hardly surprising they should come up with its worthy successor, ARM.

I still have the HEX code for the SCMP monitor if any one is interested, all 256 byte of it!!! :slight_smile:

I am currently using my Mega 2560 board to program EPROMs for my SYM-1 system.... The Z-80 S100 projects mentioned above inspired me to do it!!!

Cheers, Rob