screen is very powerful, but most of the time something simple like cool term is better, in my opinion anyway.

@Ed. Oh yes mac ports and home-brew are both installed here as well (although if you read the small print you should have them both installed at the same time, and occasionally causes clashes but some stuff is available on one or other so worth it).

Oh and +1 for KiCAD on Mac here as well, just ...

I use a Mac and generally not an issue. There are a few thing like Xilinx programmers that don't run on Mac. But you can use linux or Fusion/Parallels for things where you can't find open source, compile your own etc. I do have a small msi u100 plus running ubuntu as a backup as carrying a iMac ...

I got the UART from BBD UART paper for my first SBC build, but I am still distracted by Jac's excellent L-STAR and learning spin and prop asm. So can't comment if, as a newbie, the UART is easier to get working than the 65c51.

I've no problem understanding my minicomputer assembly programs / libraries that I wrote in the early eighties.. even though I hadn't looked at them for decades.
I remember sitting down and writing some assembly routines now and then, to get my energy back.. it was very relaxing.

Must just be me ...

Reasons for not using asm is it is I won't remember how it works in a year...
A good assembly language programmer liberally comments his or her code so he or she will remember a year or five from now "how it works." I have source code from the 1980s that I heavily commented and when I look at it ...

> I think in the 6502 world people just used to asm and forget outside most people don't know asm.

There are for sure some people like that, but best not to generalise too much.

Didn't mean it like that.

I meant more an empirical observation that people outside of 8bit processor and micro ...

I am looking to write stuff stuff on propellor and will either use spin or C. Reasons for not using asm is it is I won't remember how it works in a year (and I find HLL easier to understand) and also there are many more code examples and prebuilt software to run on the cogs in spin/c than ASM. And ...

There's Acorn's BBC Basic too. I think it's a really good Basic, but it requires an OS, and it's 16k.


+1 for BBC BASIC. But then I am biased as I have spent about 3 months writing TELNET in BBC BASIC which, is hovering around 40k RAM at the moment and growing.

Plus if you go for the extra ROM ...

Would be interested to know what you could get the postage to. I am sure I am not the only one in the UK who would get one direct if postage was a bit cheap, takes all the hassle out.

I haven't finished costing all the components yet, but unlikely I will get them cheaper than you can if buying them ...

So yeah, basically: buy both! Have fun! :-)


Great write up, lots of background info, thanks.

I was looking to order bareboards for L-Star and RC2014 6502 next week. The postage for the L-Star kit to the UK was a bit pricy (was nearly the price of the kit) so I think the only economical way to ...

Great thanks.

I plan to get a small run of your board this month, and then buy all the other components and RC2014 boards next month (after pay day, due to cash flow).

Keep up the articles on the blog! Also reading the MY6502 blog but that one doesn't have a nice board like yours.

Sorry I meant 'Enhanced' not 'advanced', as in Enhanced bus. My understanding is to make full use of the 64k boards etc you need the enhanced bus extra row of pins for the additional signals. I think you said you didn't have the enhanced backplane but the original one? Not sure what the extra pins ...

Thanks. The L-star looks interesting. Now I am not sure whether to do l-star or rc2014. I guess I will have to build both.

If you are just running a basic program loader or a Monitor, you can go as high as 62KB of RAM minus the i/o space.

If you want to include a variant of BASIC plus the Monitor or just BIOS, you might be able to get 56KB of RAM. Some variants of MS BASIC build to 8KB. I found that with EhBASIC ...