LANGUAGES

TO-CIRCUIT.

The electronics workbench, on a cartridge. You describe the circuit, one component per line: resistors, capacitors, sources, diodes, op-amps, logic gates, and even a real 6809E with its memory and its PIA. The machine simulates it, then shows its instruments as on a lab bench: oscilloscope, logic analyzers, multimeters, LEDs and lamps. And the WORKBENCH builds the same circuit with the mouse, with the instruments moving live.

The complete language reference (in French)

The RC filter readout: on the oscilloscope, the input square wave in yellow and the capacitor charging in blue.
FILTRE. A square wave through a resistor and a capacitor.
An op-amp amplifier readout: the sine input and the amplified output, clipped on the rails.
AMPLI. An op-amp with a gain of 10, clipping on its rails.
A 4-bit counter readout: the logic analyzer shows its four outputs, the oscilloscope a staircase ramp.
COMPTEUR. A 4-bit counter and a staircase converter.
The 6809E bench readout: the bus analyzer shows addresses and data in hexadecimal, cycle by cycle.
BANC6809. A 6809E, its ROM, its RAM and a PIA, bus cycle by bus cycle.
WORKBENCH on the 6809E bench: the schematic with its buses, the disassembly window with a breakpoint and the registers, and the analyzer highlighting the cycles of one instruction.
WORKBENCH. The workbench: the schematic with the mouse, live instruments, and the 6809E debugger linked to the analyzer.
CIRCUIT
circuit "Filtre RC"
PULSE gen (entree, GND) low=0V high=5V freq=100Hz
R r1 (entree, sortie) value=1kohm
C c1 (sortie, GND) value=1uF
SCOPE osc (entree, sortie, GND) time=2ms volts=1V
run 40ms

The language

  • One component per line: TYPE name (node, node, ...) key=value; two pins with the same node name are connected
  • Analog: R, C, L, POT, SWITCH, DC, SINE, PULSE, DIODE, LED, OPAMP
  • Logic: BIT, CLOCK, NOT, AND, OR, XOR, NAND, NOR, DFF, COUNT4, LAMP, with four states: 0, 1, X and Z
  • The bridges A2D and D2A, and the instruments SCOPE, LOGIC, LA, METER
  • Buses (bus A[15:0]) and the 6809E bench: M6809E, ROM8, RAM8, PIA6821, DECODE, PHASE09, RESET09, PULL

The cartridge

  • RUN simulates the circuit and shows the readout of its instruments in 800 × 600; a key brings back the prompt, which prints the measurements, and VOIR shows the readout again
  • EDIT opens the editor, with the language colours; an error names its line and its component
  • AIDE R, AIDE SCOPE...: the pins and keys of each component; INFO and MESURES sum up
  • RUN "3:FILTRE", and likewise COMPTEUR, LED, REDRESSE, AMPLI, DEMIADD, SEUIL and BANC6809: eight circuits on the system disk

WORKBENCH

  • The circuit as a schematic: a palette, components you place, move and wire with the mouse; the text stays the reference and is rewritten at each gesture
  • Live simulation, wires coloured by their voltage or level; a click flips a switch, the wheel turns a potentiometer
  • The 6809E debugger: disassembly, registers, breakpoints, single cycle or single instruction, and a click in the analyzer finds the instruction behind an access
  • Load a ROM on the bench, with its SHA-256 fingerprint and its reset vector

A lab bench in the machine

In the days of the Thomson computers, electronics was learned with a soldering iron, a breadboard and an oscilloscope lent by the school. TO-CIRCUIT keeps that approach: build, measure, understand, then change a value and try again. The simulation is made for the machine: nodal analysis for the voltages, events for the logic, and the 6809 of the ASSEMBLEUR cartridge replayed on the wires. Its models are deliberately simple, so that you see what a circuit does rather than the fine points of a real component.