A Microcomputer Laboratory Work Station

This paper describes a work station designed for undergraduate microcomputer interfacing laboratories. The station includes a powerful set of hardware prototyping and software development tools. Development and downloading of software is faciltated by a communications system which links the work station to a time-sharing host computer. The communications software provides a transparent mode of operation, in which the user may directly interact with time-sharing system facilties (editors and cross-assemblers, for example), and a mode which provides packeted, error-checked downloading of work station object code. This arrangement makes optimal use of available computing resources for software development, and eliminates the need for magnetic storage devices at the work station.