Motorola 68000 Educational Computer Board
{{Short description|none}}
The Motorola 68000 Educational Computer Board (MEX68KECB) was a development board for the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, introduced by Motorola in 1981. It featured the 68K CPU, memory, I/O devices and built-in educational and training software.
Hardware
- CPU: 4-MHz Motorola 68000
- RAM: 32KB
- ROM: 16KB
- 9600 baud serial port for dumb terminal connection
- 9600 baud serial port for host computer connection
- Parallel port for communication and printer connection
- Audio output for tape storage
- 24-bit programmable interval timer
- Wire-wrap area for custom circuitry
- Required power voltages: -12V, +5V and +12V
Software
The board has built-in 16K ROM memory containing assembly/disassembly/stepping/monitoring software called TUTOR. The software was operated using command-line interface over a serial link, and provided many commands useful in machine code debugging. Memory contents (including programs) could be dumped via a serial link to a file on the host computer. The file was transferred in Motorola's S-Record format. Similarly, files from host could be uploaded to the board's arbitrary user memory area.
Price
The price of the Motorola ECB at launch was {{USD|495|1981|round=-1}}{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1983-10/page/n325/mode/2up |title=The M68000 Educational Computer Board |publisher=BYTE Magazine |date=1983-10-01 |accessdate=2021-08-13}} which was relatively inexpensive for a computer with an advanced for that time 16/32-bit CPU.
Use
According to the manual, for basic use only a dumb terminal and power source are required. However, it seems that in colleges the board was predominantly used in connection with a time-sharing host computer to teach assembly language programming and other computer science subjects.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TSYLAAAAQBAJ&dq=motorola_68000_ecbecb&pg=PA485 |title=The Atmel AVR Microcontroller: MEGA and XMEGA in Assembly and C |date=14 January 2013 |publisher=Han-Way Huang|isbn=978-1285500089 }}
References
{{Reflist}}
MC68000 Educational Computer Board User's Manual
External links
- MC68000 Educational Computer Board User's Manual [https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_motorola68CBD2EduCompBdJul82_8791580]