65C02

[Sionyn]

interesting begings of a 6502 computer

[necroscope]

Thanks for posting,will start to follow this project with intrest.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I don't understand why people waste time messing about with  obsolete stuff like this (and why so many people think it's cool) when there so much more interesting and useful stuff that can be done with modern parts.

[grumpydoc]

I'm likely to play with a few similar projects just because I have the bits in the parts bin.

I do find it odd that Sionyn is feeding the data bus from a microcontroller though.

[saturation]

Its interesting a class of people find old technology interesting.  We can go back further to those still interested in muskets, vacuum tube devices, sword making, bow & arrow, catapults, suits of armor etc.,

I don't understand why people waste time messing about with  obsolete stuff like this (and why so many people think it's cool) when there so much more interesting and useful stuff that can be done with modern parts.

[Sionyn]

not mine though i do like the simple elegance of 6502

my current projects at the moment are

hill climb algorithm that being used to cracking a paper and pen cipher possibly looking into FPGA incrimination (huge searchspace but getting some results)
something to with all these microwave oscillators free from some idiot fly-tipping LNB's
 

[WBB]

I don't understand why people waste time messing about with  obsolete stuff like this (and why so many people think it's cool) when there so much more interesting and useful stuff that can be done with modern parts.

I don't understand why some people are offended, to the point of posting their disgust, at things other people are interested in...

[AndyC_772]

I don't understand why people waste time messing about with  obsolete stuff like this (and why so many people think it's cool) when there so much more interesting and useful stuff that can be done with modern parts.

Mike, my A-level project was a 6502 based system built on breadboards. It taught me a lot about decoupling, power supplies, timing and signal integrity which has served me well ever since and which I'd never have had to think about if I'd just stuck a PIC on a board. I've no idea how, if at all, today's young electronics students get to learn this stuff, but actually building a microprocessor system from the ground up has to be a pretty good way to do it.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I don't understand why people waste time messing about with  obsolete stuff like this (and why so many people think it's cool) when there so much more interesting and useful stuff that can be done with modern parts.

I don't understand why some people are offended, to the point of posting their disgust, at things other people are interested in...

Who said anything about being offended or disgusted?

[ptricks]

I've no idea how, if at all, today's young electronics students get to learn this stuff, but actually building a microprocessor system from the ground up has to be a pretty good way to do it.

They generally don't learn it because that 'low level stuff' doesn't interest them as much . The current generation isn't as fascinated by getting an LED to blink like the older generation. Stuff like that is too simple to them and so they skip over it which is a shame because there are a lot of lessons to be learned by doing a lot of the basic stuff.

I compare it to when parents buy their kid a new car vs an old car. The kid with the old car learns  how things like not being able to get it start sucks and what caused the problem. The kid with the new car goes through life getting suckered by mechanics that tell them the XYZ part is the problem and it will cost him $500 to fix, yeah it is that little wire that came loose, but it takes special tools and skills to plug back .

In electronics I see it all the time when someone wants to spec a new IC to replace the old IC that worked perfectly fine just because this is the newer model. All the concerns about just how compatible seems unimportant, it is newer so it must be better.

I still read electronics magazines from 40 years ago and I always find some little bit of knowledge that still applies today.

[jucole]

It was a tad dull ;-) BUT it's not really about the 6502 computer;  he's aiming to create a SID player according to the "about" text.   And if you didn't already know the SID chip, or MOS Technology 6581/8580 is one of the most iconic sought after sound chips ever made!    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_SID

(edit: The band Carbon Based Lifeforms (also known as CBL) is an ambient music duo formed in 1996 in Gothenburg, Sweden used the SID in one of their songs. )

[free_electron]

I don't understand why people waste time messing about with  obsolete stuff like this (and why so many people think it's cool) when there so much more interesting and useful stuff that can be done with modern parts.

Says the man who rips old x-ray machines apart... 

But then again . i also don't understand that. Even though the 6502 lives on in several other processors ( remember the DIGIT-2000 digital TV chipsets from ITT ? Those were driven by an 6502. There is other chips out there used in TV's that are also 6502 driven... then again TV's with picture tubes are also dinosaurs. hmm. i guess you;re right )

Let's find the most obscure , unobtainable processor and try to make a one of a kind computer with it. and then try to port linux onto it .. for fun 
while the digikey and mouser catalogs have hundreds of thousands of interesting components to play with.

Building a small computer around the 6502 is going to cost you more in parts ( ram eprom , a 6522 'pia' (parallel interface adapter) for parallel and 6521 'acia' (asynchronous communications interface adapter) for serial comms. probably will need to slap on an 6845 to drive an old picture tube tv. you'll have to bodge a monitor program , display driver routine , make character generator rom... . and you can get a single chip that has more ram ,eprom , serial ports and i/o and runs at 50 times the speed for 1.5$ in the form of a PIC or an AVR...

But hey, to each his own. Some people tinker with 6502 , some people tinker with glass balloons containing bits of scrap metal that they heat , some people use a rusty needle on a block of galene. who are we to decide what they should do. The point of hobby electronics is having fun. If it were for a commercial undertaking ... then again many a tube amp rakes in big bucks from audiophools.  maybe there is a market for nostalgia computers too.... but , look at the soft glow of the characters being slowly written  dancing on the amber picture tube. you just can't get that warm fuzzy feeling from a sharp LCD being refreshed a thousand times a second and feeding you num,bers calculated at GHz speed. it just doesn;t feel the same ... 

[necroscope]

I don't understand why people waste time messing about with  obsolete stuff like this (and why so many people think it's cool) when there so much more interesting and useful stuff that can be done with modern parts.

I have about 20 old arcade boards running 6502 cpu's so anything 6502 related i find quite interesting.I also find it interesting that plenty have tried to emulate most of those old gameboards on modern hardware and it is never quite the same and never as perfect as the original.

[justanothercanuck]

I don't understand why people waste time messing about with  obsolete stuff like this (and why so many people think it's cool) when there so much more interesting and useful stuff that can be done with modern parts.

Because building a 80s-classic microcomputer with an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi is sacrilege, and takes half the work out of it. 

[amyk]

I'm from the "opposition" (prefer working with Z80 and the like) but this deserves a mention: http://www.visual6502.org/

Just like the Z80, the 6502, 8051 and a few other really old architectures are still around in the form of IP cores that get integrated into SoCs, so I don't think they're obsolete in that sense. A few modern LCD controllers have an 80186(!) core in them. Novatek makes various embedded controllers with 6502 cores. Cypress PSoC is 8051-based. Z80 cores are found in a few far-East media player SoCs.

PIC is from around the same era. AVR is a little newer (mid 90s).

[jeroen74]

I used a Z80182 in a design. It's one of a kind really with its SCC that supports HDLC and its 16550 MIMIC interface. Add a PSD8xx chip and basically you're done. In general I probably would never consider such old skool device for any modern design. A legacy code base could be a perfectly valid reason though.

[mark5009]

If you are interested in this kind of thing, Quinn over at blondihacks has been making a DYI 6502 computer and documenting her progress.  She is calling the project Veronica

  http://quinndunki.com/blondihacks/?p=680

Brilliant stuff.