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u Tales of Kim On the Edge -- Chapter 1.5 by Brian Bagnell Part IV Commodore soon realized the value of Microchess. At the time, electronic games were becoming popular in households. Several companies released handheld games such as Simon (Milton Bradley), Merlin (Parker Brothers), and later Speak & Spell (Texas Instruments). Each of these electronic games would go on to huge success, especially when E.T. the Extra Terrestrial featured Speak & Spell in 1982. Commodore wanted a piece of the electronic games market, so they contacted Jennings about creating their own handheld game. "We did a thing called CHESSmate based around Jennings work," says Peddle. Internally, CHESSmate was very similar to an ordinary Kim-1 computer, with a sibling of the 6502 microprocessor, the 6504, substituted. Commodore hired Jolt maker Microcomputer Associates to construct the CHESSmate prototype. "Of course, it didn't work very well," adds Peddle. At the time the CHESSmate was developed there was only one other electronic chess game, the Fidelity Chess Challenger. The contract with Commodore called for Jennings' game to beat the Chess Challenger in tournament play. "One of the funniest moments was my lawyer going over the contract," recalls Jennings. "He read the clause which required that my program beat the Chess Challenger and pondered it over for a while. He just couldn't wrap his mind around the concept of the two machines playing against each other and one winning. 'What do you mean.' he kept asking. It's hard to put yourself back to the seventies when most people had no contact with computers and had no concept of machines that played games against people or other computers." Commodore engineers added more ROM memory to the game, and Jennings improved his Microchess code by adding 32 opening moves. He even provided eight different play levels to the game so novices could enjoy the game. CHESSmate was able to hold up Jennings' end of the contract by consistently beating the rival Chess Challenger. In 1978, Jennings traveled to Pasadena where Bobby Fischer was in hiding from the world. He spent several days demonstrating the prototype CHESSmate software running on an expanded KIM-1. Fischer played many games and handily beat the program each time, but he had a strange fascination with the alien strategy devised by a machine. Fischer even challenged Jennings to a game, an offer that caught Jennings off guard. "It was a surreal experience being challenged by the reigning world champion to a friendly game at a time when very few people even knew where Bobby was and nobody had seen or played him in years," says Jennings. Though Fischer predictably won, Jennings believes he gave Fischer a respectable challenge. A consummate businessman, Jennings offered a royalty to Fischer in return for calling the electronic game the "Bobby". At the time, the strongest commercial game available was the "Boris" named after Boris Spassky, who Bobby Fischer had defeated in Iceland for the title of World Champion. Even though the CHESSmate would play competitively against the Boris computer it could not defeat it every time. Fischer declined and "Bobby" became CHESSmate. An application that causes users to purchase a computer is called a killer app. Games were rapidly fulfilling this role for the KIM-1 and other early microcomputers, and Microchess was one of the biggest sellers. Over the next ten years, Peter Jennings sold several million copies of Microchess to owners of home computers. With the help of the KIM-1, Jennings helped pioneer the computer games industry. THE KIM MODULAR SYSTEM After the Commodore acquisition, the KIM-1 officially became the first computer marketed under the Commodore name, along with the TIM kit. All KIM-1 computers now included the Commodore "chicken-head" logo etched into the printed circuit board. John May had originally designed the KIM-1 with expansion in mind, as evidenced by the system bus and I/O lines made available to the user on the card edge connectors. With the surprise success of the KIM-1, others soon decided to create hardware expansions for the KIM system. One entrepreneur who spotted the potential was another former GE employee, Larry Hittle. Peddle recalls Hittle's contribution to the GE computer program. "He was involved with that whole program," says Peddle. "He put GE in the communications business. He was the guy that put together the communications system for the original Dartmouth machine." Like many ex-GE employees, he was an entrepreneur. "He got the idea of starting his own CRT [Cathode Ray Tube] company, a company called Courier Systems. So he spun a company out of GE. He started Courier and did all the things wrong that all the other entrepreneurs were doing. Venture capitalists stole him blind, and he finally dropped out of that company to start his own little assembly company." Hittle formed a company in the Denver area called Monolithic Systems. As it turns out, one of the first devices manufactured by Hittle's company was an accessory for the KIM-1. "He was heavily involved [with Commodore] for a while," says Peddle. With the surprise success of the KIM-1, Hittle decided to design and manufacture his own line of KIM-1 expansion products. Additional memory was the most desired commodity. Hittle developed two different memory expansion boards, the KIM-2 and KIM-3, with four and eight kilobytes of RAM respectively. At the heart of Hittle's expansion system was a motherboard, called the KIM-4. The foot-squared KIM-4 motherboard mated with the KIM-1 expansion connector, essentially creating an elongated circuit board. It contained six expansion slots, much like the slots on an Altair computer. Each slot contained 44-pin connectors. This allowed users to connect video cards, sound cards, memory cards, keyboard adapters, or anything else the computer world dreamed up. If six slots in the KIM were not enough, Hittle designed the board with a BUS expansion connector so users could attach several KIM-4 motherboards to each other. Hittle also created two accessory cards for his motherboard. The first was the KIM-5 resident assembler and editor, which was provided essential software tools in ROM. He also created the KIM-6 prototyping board, useful for hardware designers creating their own electronics for the KIM. In partnership with Hittle, Commodore sold and marketed all the KIM expansion products, releasing a color brochure of the entire line of products. The KIM-1, which began life as a demonstrator, was becoming a true computer system. Other third-party developers also produced KIM-1 hardware products. Don Lancaster, famous for his groundbreaking early writings in BYTE magazine on digital logic and video interfaces, designed and sold a version of his TV Typewriter that allowed the KIM-1 to connect to a television or video monitor. He marketed the device through his company, Synergetics. Many homebrew projects were created by hackers to extend the capability of the KIM-1. Peter Jennings expanded his Kim system to 8 kilobytes RAM. More importantly, he added two 8-inch floppy disk drives which required that he also create his own disk operating system in order to use them. He also created the Micro-ADE development system, a popular KIM-1 utility for cassette or disk based development. The resulting system was so powerful Jennings used it to develop later versions of Microchess for the Commodore PET and Apple II Jennings also attached his KIM-1 system to a primitive modem so he could operate his computer remotely. This feature came in handy when Jennings flew to Santa Clara to deliver his CHESSmate code. While in the offices of Microcomputer Associates, Jennings realized his code required some minor changes. Using a terminal equipped with a paper tape punch, Jennings called his KIM-1 system in Toronto, made the required changes to the source code, re-assembled the code, then punched out a new paper tape to be burned into ROM. It was an impressive demonstration from what looked like a simple computer. Another third-party manufacturer, Forethought Products of Oregon, created an expansion motherboard for the KIM-1 called the KIMSI. The KIMSI had eight S-100 bus expansion connectors, allowing peripherals made for the popular Altair 8800 bus to interface with the KIM-1.5. The KIMSI was also compatible with the Apple I computer. The KIM-1's on-board serial interface allowed users to connect their computers to terminals, and some even connected them to electric typewriters for use as a printer. With its expansion capabilities, the KIM-1 system was able to replicate the basic abilities of minicomputers. The KIM-1 system had great features for the price but it was still lacking in one area - it had no case. As a writer to Byte magazine noted, "I just can't see myself sitting there with a naked board gathering dust and me dropping ashes all over it while I sweat out a program." To remedy this problem, Commodore created an optional plastic enclosure which looked very much like a mammoth calculator case. In 1976, Peddle interested a third high-profile source for the 6502. "After we were bought by Commodore, we were approached by Rockwell to buy rights to the product," recalls Peddle. "Rockwell came along and gave us a bunch of prestige." With a third, stable source for the 6502, hardware makers were more likely to use the 6502 in their products. Rockwell wanted to sell a clone of the KIM-1, but Commodore was reluctant to license clones. Instead, Rockwell released a "KIM-like" board called the AIM-65. The 6502 system was similar to the KIM-1, but contained a 20-digit LED display and a tiny thermal printer mounted directly on the motherboard. It also included a full-sized keyboard, which attached to the board by a ribbon cable. They sold the system for under $500. Synertek also became a second source for the 6502 microprocessor and wanted to clone the KIM-1. They released the VIM, but fearing confusion with the cleaning product, they soon renamed it SYM; their system contained a more extensive operating system and more memory than the KIM-1. Overseas, a Dutch company named Elektor developed a European KIM-1 clone, called the Elektor-Junior. In Germany, a series of systems called the ALPHA were developed. Commodore actively marketed the KIM-1 system against their competition, with advertisements appearing in 1978 asking, "Honestly: How many reasons do you need to make sure your next microprocessor is the original, genuine KIM." The advertisements appeared in magazines like Kilobaud, but curiously, all Commodore advertisements in BYTE magazine ended and would not reappear for almost a decade. The KIM-1 was produced by Commodore until about 1981, and has since become known as the first single-board computer (a computer with all components attached to a single circuit board). As Charpentier recalls, "Really the biggest success on the 6502 program was the old KIM-1 board." Estimates for the number of KIM-1 computers sold are difficult to find. "They sold a couple of hundred thousand, I think," says Yannes. "Commodore sold lots," says Peddle. "We were selling thousands per month - big numbers." Did it get over a hundred thousand? "It might have gotten that high. It was certainly higher than ten thousand." A sad thing happens to old computers like the KIM-1. The next generation of computers soon rolls in with the latest features, and users become bored and a little disgusted at their obsolete machinery. Many discard them as obsolete relics, only to realize years later how much they cherished the machine. As a result, there are not many KIM-1's left in the world. ******* ************* ******* To read the entire Commodore story, order: "On the Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore" ISBN 0973864907. This hardcover book is available for only $29.95 at www.commodorebook.com.