Ever heard of the Micronic 1000 portable computer terminal?
Chances are you haven't. The Micronic was a handheld Z80-based
computer terminal made by the now-defunct Victor Micronic company.
They were probably used in large department stores for stock
control (How do I know this? Derek Kennedy [see links] got
a few of these from Greenweld Electronics - a few of his had
BHS stickers on). I own one Micronic unit and I'm currently
attempting to get it to do something genuinely useful.
Derek's site has a machine code monitor available to download
that could provide a base for other software developments.
If you're interested, the unit's specifications are:
8 lines by 20 characters (160x64 dots) LCD with one
Hitachi HD61830 LCD controller
Real-time clock
Hitachi HD146818
With the aid of a camcorder I've managed to work out where two
of the I/O ports are routed to. The PLINTH port is the LED array
on the bottom of the unit and the V24_ADAPTOR is the front set
of LEDs. Hopefully that should help you out if you're reverse
engineering the ROMs.
Photos
These were taken many moons ago, with a camcorder and a video capture
card. When I can be bothered, I'll drag the Micronic out and take some new
photos with my Olympus digicam. Until then, these are the best photos I've
got.
