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 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.
References
MC68000 Educational Computer Board User's Manual
External links MC68000 Educational Computer Board User's Manual