Anyone heard of the "Nibbler" by Digi-Key around 1978?

[Phil__G]

A ready-built, expandable SC/MP II NIBL computer from 1978.
Theres a discussion running on VCFED and on the FB SC/MP group, but it seems there is very little to go on. Anyone heard of it?
Advertised on PDF page 107: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/70s/1978/Poptronics-1978-09.pdf

[SiriusHardware]

I can actually remember this (obviously American) magazine being on sale in WH Smith, I bought it whenever I found it - I even imported a couple of things advertised in it, courtesy of a friendly relative I had living in the USA at the time. I have to assume the advertiser (Digi-Key corp.) is the very same Digikey still trading today?

Sadly I've never heard of this SC/MP system / trainer but I had a great time browsing the magazine, so many references to things I was interested in at the time. There are even at least two adverts for a Sinclair product in there (The PDM35 DMM).

[Phil__G]

Thanks G yes its the same Digi-Key we all know & love, but we're told they know nothing about it - though they did find a Nibbler memory expansion document, nothing else - lost to generations as too often happens
At the time and at the price it would have been quite a desirable board - few budget boards had any form of basic, and the expansion options shown... surely they must have sold a good few? ...but as we said in the Telekit thread - the cost of an essential teletype or terminal would have been discouraging to beginners
I'm excited because a previously unknown (to me) SC/MP system has surfaced, but reluctant to plug in the iron because the PICL is functionally identical with 4x the memory, and Karen's KO2019 in two cheap chips takes it even further with NIBL and 28k I could slow either to 110 baud, put it in a case labeled "Nibbler" and without opening it up you wouldnt know the label was a fib!

[nlpe1goo]

Hi Phil,
I did also never heard of the SC/MP nibbler system. As you know I only know the Elektor (Elektuur) version of the SC/MP. National semiconductor had also a nibbl computer so far I can remember Elektor had published that one also.
The emulator in the PIC emulates the processor very good indeed. Unfortunately it breaks the 4K boundaries, After 0x1FFF the program counter continues at 0x2000 instead if 0c1000.
I've bought 4 original SC/MP II chips and have a real SC/MP computer up and running also.
Many of those firms lost a lot of documentation of the seventies and eighties. So Zilog doesn't know anything of their Forth Z8000 processor anymore.

[Phil__G]

It makes you wonder if NASA kept all the 1970s RCA1802 documentation, its quite possible they didnt as Voyager was never expected to live this long!
And how many 1802 assembler experts are currently amongst their ranks ? !

[ortek_service]

Fortunately there's still quite a lot of documentation around for the 1802 that was apparently about the only 100percent proved correct design due to its simplicity. But wasn't always too nice to program without a proper stack - Like the SC/MP etc

[julie_m]

I'm just amazed, after having tried something similar myself, that anyone managed to get a version of BASIC into 4K bytes.

And yes, programming without a stack is hard!

[TonyDuell]

Originally Posted by julie_m

I'm just amazed, after having tried something similar myself, that anyone managed to get a version of BASIC into 4K bytes.

TRS-80 Level 1 BASIC was 4K of Z80 code. This was a somewhat minimal BASIC, one one-dimensional numeric array, 2 string variables that you could input or print (and do nothing else with), no trig' log, etc functions. I did have floating point though.

[Michael Haardt]

That's only due to the intermediate language.

Programming without a stack is only hard if you need recursion. Otherwise you can use statically allocated stack frames. Subroutine calls are done using branch-and-link by loading a pointer register and exchanging it with the PC. Nested calls need to save the pointer register containing the return address. Data in the call frame is typically addressed by p2.

Back then, programming micros and mainframes were two different worlds. The SC/MP is heavily influenced by mainframes, but the documentation never cared to explain how it was meant to be used. Certainly it was obvious to its developers only.

The shortcomings did not help to change that.

[Realtime]

Originally Posted by Phil__G

Theres a discussion running on VCFED and on the FB SC/MP group, but it seems there is very little to go on. Anyone heard of it?

Great to learn of another SC/MP based system. The photos on the VCFED post are a bit Lo-Fi but at least they still exist.

Other modules available were a PSU/IO Adapter board, Digital/Digital Relay Control Board and an Analog/Digital board so it seems to have been fairly well developed.

There is also a comment in Phil_G's PICL National Industrial Basic Language computer by Karen Orton thread, on the EEVBlog forum, by Granzeier that says "I actually have an old Nibbler PCB, which runs NIBL. One of these days, I need to get it out and make sure that it works". I wonder if he ever did dig it out? If he is still active on the forums perhaps he could post some decent photos of the board.

[Phil__G]

I'd forgotten about that Ian, I've emailed him, hope he's still active...

[Qbertni]

Youtube video of a nibbler, he plans on documenting it and producing a workalike replica pcb
https://youtu.be/Sbxy7Ob3hkI?si=jDYYuqG1iE5nlegI

[ortek_service]

Originally Posted by Qbertni

Youtube video of a nibbler, he plans on documenting it and producing a workalike replica pcb
https://youtu.be/Sbxy7Ob3hkI?si=jDYYuqG1iE5nlegI

Thanks for the link.
I see that Youtube video was only posted earlier today, and has currently already got >500 views and 30 comments (Inc. from TimGilberts + PhilG).

So it seems like it may have got mentioned on another forum - Although their 'Hello World' Youtube channel does have > 3k subscribers, so some may have notifications / seen previous videos about it.

[nlpe1goo]

I watched the video also. Very interesting. I never heard about the nibbler also. I only know the SC.MP from Elektuur (Elektor). I was also surprised that Elektor was not mentioned at all in the video. Meanwhile I've also redesigned a SC/MP board with NIBL on it based loosely on an Elektor design and a design I found on the internet.

[Mark1960]

Hi Nick, it would be interesting to see your sc/mp design if you would like to start a new thread with some pctures and schematic.

Mark

[Roninfourseven]

Just watched the video on this, quite interesting, might consider building one if the guy creates a board for it like he says.

I should build my Cosmac Elf II replica first I suppose...

[Realtime]

That first Nibbler video was excellent, with Granzeier's actual board being rediscovered. Really interesting to see the Digikey catalogue from that time too.
Now Part 2 is there showing the progress on the replica board, with a link to the Nibbler documentation available for download. Just amazing! And then, to top it all Craig powers up the original Nibbler. Essential viewing

[Phil__G]

Originally Posted by Roninfourseven

quite interesting, might consider building one if the guy creates a board for it like he says

I'm enjoying the updates and the interest this has generated, the videos have been superb and its great to see another historic SC/MP board resurrected
Depending on your stash this could be an expensive build...
To investigate NIBL itself, should anyone be unaware, there are cheap and easy alternatives, Karen Orton's 'PICL' & 'KO2019' projects. These each use two common-or-garden chips, run NIBL and other than having 8k/32k of ram as opposed to the Nibbler's 2k, essentially replicate every aspect of the Nibbler

[Roninfourseven]

Interesting, thanks I shall take a look.

[Timbucus]

I suspect that the SCRUMPI 4 would have been a similar board as the the June 29th Computer Weekly of 1978 reporting from the DIY Computer Show (held the week before in London’s West Center Hotel) said the SCRUMPI 4 was due around August with the July 20th Issue saying on p.23 that it would use the new 32Kbit NIBL ROM – so would have had BASIC.... sadly it never saw the light of day.

The SCRUMPI 3 was touted as a good machine to make a terminal to use it so that suggests it had little more than a serial interface.