Hi guys;

I'm a new guy here so forgive if some of these questions are old hat.

First is the Western Design Center still a viable business? I ask because I can't connect to their web server.

Second it has bee a long time since eI've spent any time in the 8/16 bit world and in this case I'm interested in chips that can reasonably compete with the Atmel and PIC style highly integrated processors for embedded control. My impression is that there is little to nothing 6502 derived on the market with a significant amount of integrated support logic. Is this true or am I just out of touch with the 6502 industry?

My interest is embedded control, in one case the desire to build a CNC controller. This can be done on a Mega with little external logic and even on some of the new ARM based embedded chips (M3 & M4's). By CNC controller I mean a device that takes a stream of G-Code and generates the required signals (step and direction) to drive a machine. Right now I don't have an indication of a 6502 based chip that has the embedded RAM, ROM, and hardware for I/O to do this on a very small board. Maybe I'm wrong here.

Beyond all of that is there a good 6502 supporting emulator (free by the way) that runs on Mac OS or Linux suitable for embedded development? I'm not really interested in a gaming emulator or Apple 2 emulator.


Sorry if this is an overload of obvious questions but my interesting the 6502 was revived by an article else where and frankly I really don't know the state of the product line. I was kinda hopeful there was an embedded solution available after all these years.

I just loaded the home page for http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/ and it looks OK to me.

The vanilla 6502 is a general purpose microprocessor, and as you point out doesn't have the level integration of the PIC and AVR microcontrollers. There is the W65C134 which is a microcontroller variant and offers a built-in UART and I/O pins, or an external bus instead instead​ of the I/O pins.

Web site works for me.

They sell a pair of microcontrollers based on the 6502 and 65186, since wdc isn't reachable by your try http://www.mouser.com/westerndesigncenter/product-line/

They also sell their core for integration into FPGA's if your a big enough buyer.

I have not tried any yet http://www.6502.org/tools/emu/

Was just playing with an 8085 simulator https://gnusim8085.github.io/ myself as I used those in college and dug out one of my old projects. I wonder how hard it would be to swap out the core for a 502 core.

I just bought my first couple atmel's after finding avrdude (no way I'm going to install windows for atmel studio). And played with pics on and off.

Before learning 8085/8086 and the 68k in college I did 6502 assembly on a C64

http://www.wsxyz.net/sim65/ works, I just downloaded and compiled it.

We're glad to have you.


It's working for me. I've never seen their website down. http://westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/


There's a ton of it being produced (100,000,000+ per year), but it's virtually all in custom ICs, ie, not just FPGAs but rather custom silicon, for specific automotive, industrial, appliance, toy, and even life-support applications. Bill Mensch said in an interview a year ago that he plans to make the '02 "available forever" (his words). I sure wish Microchip had used the '02 rather than that decrepit processor they got from General Instrument.


I've designed PIC16's into a lot of products; but the need there was for a small, all-in-one solution for production where space was at a premium and it needed to be inexpensive to produce in quantity (unlike a computer board with multiple parts). For the workbench where it's ok to have a home-made 65c02 computer board that's 30 square inches (plus mezzanine, and sometimes plug-in modules), and probably even for big CNC machines, and where you're only going to make one or just a few, the microcontroller may be less suitable, because development is not interactive. If I need to experiment with a new IC (for example a digital pot), it's always much faster and easier to first do it on the workbench computer to make sure I understand the new part's protocol before transferring to the microcontroller. Even if you had a simulator, it will only simulate the microprocessor or microcontroller of interest. It won't simulate the other hardware you might want to connect. A true emulator could actually connect to them; but true emulators are rare. I don't use simulators or emulators in my design work.

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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?

You could also do this interactively on a microcontroller. In fact, I do this all the time. I run a UART based command line interface, and I'll add a command to send a byte to SPI, for instance, so I can play with a new device on a low level. When I figure out how something works, I can make the command a bit more sophisticated.

For a while it seemed like the major volumes of 6502 system on chip were made under license by SunPlus - calculators, toys, optical mice. In other words, WDC were getting revenue by other means than selling chips.

Welcome!


Give Mike Kowalski's editor/assembler/simulator a try. It simulates (not emulates—emulation is actually something done in hardware) the 6502 or the Rockwell version of the 65C02 in a generic environment, which includes a terminal I/O window that can be driven with simple code. The assembler has a very good macro language with a number of C-like capabilities. Using a macro library, I am able to assemble 65C816 programs with it.

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

There are a bunch of links in the reference section here on 6502.org - see
http://6502.org/tools/asm/

My preference is for the browser-based tools, especially for learning. Easy6502 is a well-received tutorial with exercises and an embedded emulator.

As BDD says, Kowalski's emulator is also well-received, it runs on WINE on both linux and osx. It's both an IDE and emulator, with simulated I/O devices - probably a good fit if you're thinking embedded.

I've got an early CNC, which runs on a 6800. I intend someday to replace that 6800 with a 6502, or more likely a 65816.

With the 6800, it runs faster and more accurately than controls fifteen years newer based on x86 processors. I don't think a 65xx will decrease its capabilities.

I can't imagine too many scenarios where a microcontroller is more suitable than a single-board or event multi-board computer for CNC work.