I have finally gotten around to putting a page together for a rather obscure piece of 6502 related hardware, the Infotron System IF65. There probably aren't many of these out in the wild, but just in case someone runs across one I hope this documentation will be helpful.

Back in the late 80's and early 90's I worked for Infotron Systems (later Gandalf Technologies) which manufactured data communications equipment. A lot of Infotron’s equipment was based on the 6502 microprocessor, so much so that they designed and manufactured their own 6502 in circuit emulator the IF65. The IF65 was a great tool for both developing embedded 6502 software and for troubleshooting 6502 hardware. The IF65 was mainly used in house, but I know of at least one other company that Infotron sold them to. Fortunately, I ran across a working IF65 at a flea market a long time ago. Since there isn’t much information about this device online I decided it would be a good idea to document it the things that I remember about out.


http://atarihq.com/danb/IF65.shtml

Welcome, and thankyou for the post. I remember American Automation was a mainstream manufacturer of 6502 (and other) emulators. Is there a reason the company you worked for didn't use them? (I think they were about $10K though.)

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http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

Thanks for taking the time to document this.

In case you are interested, I've done some work recently on a modern-day equivalent:
https://github.com/hoglet67/AtomBusMon/wiki

I'd love to get a better understanding of how these old ICE systems worked, and what there limitations were. I take it you don't have a full set of schematics? It would be really fun to try to re-create this in modern hardware (but in such a way that the original firmware could be used).

Dave

These were already in use when I started there and I never heard why they decided to build their own. Since they were a datacom company they also designed and manufactured their own bit error rate tester (see below). When they moved onto other processors they did purchase off the shelf units.

That looks like a pretty cool device, I have to look into that one a little more.

I am currently working on reverse engineering the units and creating a set of schematics for it along with a ROM dump. I'll post here when I have something to show.

Awesome! -- I'll definitely look forward to those. And, any chance of some photos of the exterior of the unit?

Cheers (and welcome),
Jeff

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In 1988 my 65C02 got six new registers and 44 new full-speed instructions!
https://laughtonelectronics.com/Arcana/ ... mmary.html

I wonder if you could include MC6800 in your capabilities.