In 1978, I was at my first engineering job after getting my BSEE. The company had set up a small lab that had variety of small computers, including a KIM-1. It also had an Apple II, a CROMEMCO computer, and a Pet, plus one or two others. At that time, I was only familiar with big iron, like an IBM 370, that I could only submit jobs to. As a result, I was in heaven. Here were computers that I could interact with directly, write programs (in Basic) for, and play games. I was in there every day at lunch or after work, sometimes staying until 2 or 3 in the morning. I messed around with the KIM a bit but found it unrefined and clunky to use as compared to the Apple or even the Pet.

Couple of blogs about my KIM-1:

1. My 1976 KIM-1 https://blog.jgc.org/2023/11/my-1976-kim-1.html

2. Getting the KIM-1 to talk to my Mac https://blog.jgc.org/2025/02/getting-kim-1-to-talk-to-my-mac...

Other KIM-1 links some may prefer:

http://retro.hansotten.nl/6502-sbc/kim-1-manuals-and-softwar...

https://groups.google.com/g/kim-1

The first single-board computer I had ever heard of. And I saw it in a book on making your own robot (1970's, TAB books, I think). No way I could afford a $400 computer with my measly allowance. Oh well—I've since been able to build a couple replicas.

The author of the robot book [1] had an unusual last name. When I came across the same last name during my time at Apple, a co-worker, I emailed him and he said that it was in fact his brother that had written the book. Small world, I guess.

[1] https://archive.org/details/howtobuildcomput0000loof

The legendary Jim Butterfield needs to be remembered in connection with the KIM.

He wrote the “The First Book of KIM” and it kickstarted his career within the 6502/6510 microprocessor family namely Commodore.

He is such an awesome role model to this day in explaining complex concepts to the average people that made them hungry for more.

Search him on YouTube, you will want to start BASIC on C64 the moment you watch him unpacking a C64 and plugin it in to show how easy it is to write BASIC programs for fun.

I nearly bought a KIM-1, but opted instead for the Synertek SYM-1, which had some improved features. It was my first real computer. (I already had a HP-41C.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SYM-1

I had one of these as a kid, actually on loan from another microcomputer enthusiast. My dad and I had soldered an SDK-85 kit (which I have) and we swapped that for the KIM-1 with another microcomputer enthusiast. It's the machine where I first started to learn programming, in machine code, entered in hex.

There's something really appealing about machines this simple which has been lost in the modern era. But this particular board was very limited, there wasn't a lot you could actually do with it.

The 8-Bit Guy did a great episode about the history of the Commodore PET and it starts with the KIM-1 and how it was basically turned into the PET. Highly recommended!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP9y_7it3ZM

As a poor engineering student, I couldn't afford one of these, but I could afford the TIM-1 chipset at $35, wire wrapped it up, and borrowed a single-line ascii terminal from a buddy. It's hanging on my lab wall next to other obsolete stuff.

README looks excessively LLM generated

thought this might be about kim dotcom -- is he 50 yet?