Hello PRO-83!
This obscure little guy came from my first venture to an actual retro-computing event. It was the Vintage Computer Festival East in October of 2021. As it was my first event, I was somewhat unsure of what to expect and a little gun-shy on actually making some purchases.
I had eyed up a few things, but everything i was interested in was bought by other folks before I could convince myself to pull the trigger. As the days wore long, I was determined to pick up SOMETHING interesting to take home, even if just as a souvenir!
Perusing one of the booths, an old keyboard assembly caught my eye. I had been looking for something that might work with the project that eventually became Interis so I took a closer look. Along with the keyboard was a CPU trainer unit, which i found mildly interesting, particularly because it used a Z80 processor. The seller couldn't tell me too much about it, just that it was a package deal for the CPU trainer, a mystery expansion card of some sort, the keyboard, power adapter, and some paperwork.
Sold.
Now I was the proud(?) owner of some stuff I didn't yet understand. When we got back to our hotel room, I wasted no time unpacking the goods and seeing what it was all about. The paperwork included a reference sheet of the Z80 instruction set and a manual for the PRO-83 unit. Thank heavens for the manual, because I would've been completely lost otherwise. It provided some background on the system architecture, assembly instructions (if you had purchased it as a kit), sample programs, and an assembly listing for the monitor ROM.
I tested a bunch of the basic functions and entered one of the example programs. It seemed at least the base unit was working, so that was satisfying, but I had no idea how to test the keyboard or expansion card. There was nothing in the manual about either one and i couldn't even find evidence of their existence on the internet.
Oh well, the base unit was still entertaining to play around with and was a satisfying curiosity.
Maybe I could figure out the rest later...