The Junior computer design was published by Elektuur/Elektor magazine from 1980 on. It was published in a series of magazine articles, four books and several socalled paperware A4 booklets. Loys Nachtmann designed and developed the the Junior Computer. G.H. Nachbar did the Dutch translation of the German books. The 4 Junior books were translated into English, German, Spanish, Italian and French as well.
The Junior design is in fact heavily inspired by the hardware of the KIM-1 (or call it a clone ..). It didn't use though the 6530 specialised chip from MOS Technology (I/O + ROM), but rather the PIA 6532 and an EPROM 2708. The floppy interface design was based on the Ohio Scientific OS65D design.
It was delivered as a kit or could be be built from only the PCB’s sold by Elektuur. Many hobbyist have build one. Later extended with an adapted version of the 8K KB9 Basic and even a disk operating system (Ohio Scientific DOS OS65D).
Many expansion cards were available. These include an input-output board (including a VIA 6522, a tape interface and an RS232 port), a VDU (video terminal) card (actually an evolution of elekterminal), an EPROM/SRAM card, a 16/64 KB DRAM card, an EPROM programmer board and even a floppy drive controller based on the Ohio Scientific DOS OS65D.
A BASIC interpreter was also available, derived from Microsoft's KB94.
Many Junior Computers were built, either from the PCB made by Elektuur and separate components or as a complete kit.
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Thanks to Denis Faivre for the pictures and to retro.hansotten.nl for some of the info.
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Lover of old computers
Tuesday 5th April 2022
Geoffrey Cody (Czech Republic)
NAME
Junior Computer
MANUFACTURER
Elektor
TYPE
Home Computer
ORIGIN
Germany
YEAR
1980
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
Monitor
KEYBOARD
23 keys hexadecimal keyboard
CPU
Rockwell 6502
SPEED
1 MHz
CO-PROCESSOR
PIA 6532 and EPROM 2708 (1K)
RAM
1 Kb RAM + 128 bytes from the PIA 6532
ROM
1 Kb EPROM (monitor)
TEXT MODES
seven segments LED display x 6
GRAPHIC MODES
None
COLORS
None
SOUND
None
I/O PORTS
Port connector (31 pins), Expansion connector (64 pins)