Introduce yourself

[BigDumbDinosaur]

JAC! wrote:

Hello everybody in here...

Welcome to our little 65xx world.

Quote:

So I close with the motto of my web site: "8-bit are enough!"

Or 16 if using the 65C816.

[BigEd]

Hi Carlos, Peter: Welcome! Thanks for telling us something of how you got here and what you're up to.
See you in the various threads...
Cheers
Ed
(Edit: oh, and I've missed a few other arrivals, so welcome to you too!)

[alkopop79]

Greg Lorincz, Hungarian living in London. My father and my uncle taught me a bit about electronics. At around the age 11 I found a Soviet book (in Hungarian) about 'cybertronics', aka logic circuits with relays and reading it got a grasp of how computers work. My high school IT education in the 90's did not help much, we had to learn to use Word and Excel. Only recently started learning programming, microcontroller tinkering but realised want to know how computers work. The 6502 seems like the perfect choice.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

alkopop79 wrote:

Greg Lorincz, Hungarian living in London. My father and my uncle taught me a bit about electronics. At around the age 11 I found a Soviet book (in Hungarian) about 'cybertronics', aka logic circuits with relays and reading it got a grasp of how computers work.

Interesting. My very first digital project was a relay computer.

Quote:

My high school IT education in the 90's did not help much, we had to learn to use Word and Excel.

Not much has changed. My oldest grandson is a senior in high school and so far, his "IT education" has consisted of fiddling around with Word and Excel. Like most of his contemporaries, he has no clue as to what computers are all about. He's absolutely astounded that I was able to build a working computer from chips and such, and not have it running Windows. That doesn't say much about the quality of the education he's received to date on computers.

Quote:

Only recently started learning programming, microcontroller tinkering but realised want to know how computers work. The 6502 seems like the perfect choice.

The 65xx family is an excellent choice. It's complicated enough to keep you challenged, yet simple enough to not discourage you. Don't be shy about asking questions. We're never shy about offering answers and opinions.

[Dajgoro]

Welcome to the community!

Quote:

Don't be shy about asking questions. We're never shy about offering answers and opinions.

When i started with my sbc, i kinda started a zillion topics in the hardware section, there you can probably find lots of answers that you are looking for...

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Dajgoro wrote:

Welcome to the community!

Quote:

Don't be shy about asking questions. We're never shy about offering answers and opinions.

When i started with my sbc, i kinda started a zillion topics in the hardware section, there you can probably find lots of answers that you are looking for...

Yes he did!

Also, be sure check out all the resources on this site. Aside from various homebrew projects, there's source code for many types of algorithms, tutorials (especially Garth's "how to build" primer, which covers a lot of the basic design issues that you might face), etc. Just about anything you might need to get your 65xx project underway can be found here.

[whartung]

Also, be grateful you're selecting the 6502. I don't think there is a resource dedicated to actually creating a machine from the ground up for any other CPU as comprehensive at this place is.

Much of it carries over to other CPUs, but as far as building boards and programming them and getting things to work, this is the best place on the internet. Everything else is mostly dealing with existing, legacy systems, or pre-made boards purchased from a vendor, or simply higher level languages that are pretty much CPU agnostic.

[Dajgoro]

whartung wrote:

Also, be grateful you're selecting the 6502. I don't think there is a resource dedicated to actually creating a machine from the ground up for any other CPU as comprehensive at this place is.

Much of it carries over to other CPUs, but as far as building boards and programming them and getting things to work, this is the best place on the internet. Everything else is mostly dealing with existing, legacy systems, or pre-made boards purchased from a vendor, or simply higher level languages that are pretty much CPU agnostic.

I wanted to build small sbc computers with other kind of cpu-s too, but there really wasn't any other community that could help with the project. Some stuff can be found for the 68000, but nothing to compare to this community. I would really like to see a community that would deal with all of the 8 and 16 bit cpu-s, and active as this one.

[alkopop79]

True. Tried to build a Cosmac Elf and failed, apparently the original diagram has an error. Strangely I could not find a single tutorial or article on 80xx series SBCs. Being one of the most successful series of microprocessors, it's ridiculous that there's nothing out on the internet. Even the 8086.org articles are useless, most of them deal with programming but not building.

[alkopop79]

Even the educational SBCs are rare and for some strange reason there's price on the manufacturers site. I've found a few simple 808x based SBC built for engineering students to play with but you need to request price quote and in the end they give you the price in rupees... Strange. They don't exactly sell hight tech! My long term plan is build a portable, battery powered (pocket sized) SBC with SMD parts that I can with me for the those 14 hour plane journeys.

[alkopop79]

Forgot to mention, I'm a teacher and do workshops on electronics for beginners. I would love to teach how to make SBCs. DIY is getting very strong in the UK and the 6502/80xx/RCA1502/Z80/6800 computers have a vintage appeal.

[BigEd]

Teaching this low level would be excellent!

[alkopop79]

I've read that many students entering IT/computers sciences and electronic engineering have no clue about programming (maybe HTML...) and how computers work. We're alienated from the technology we consume very fast. As much as I love my Arduino and Raspberry Pi, if you want to be an engineer or a serious programmer, you need to know the lowest level of computing. The beauty and the downside of the above mentioned is that they are easy to use and the user does not have to deal with the low-level details. I would be happy to do computing/digital logic 101, sort of like a pre-university 2-3 day SBC building for wannabe electronic engineers.

[alkopop79]

Apologies for my obnoxious comment! My point was: it would be great to have a DIY SBC for future e. engineering students.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

alkopop79 wrote:

I've read that many students entering IT/computers sciences and electronic engineering have no clue about programming (maybe HTML...) and how computers work.

That result is the combination of x86 architecture PCs turning into commodities, use of very high level languages that completely insulate the "programmer" from any aspect of the underlying system, and the general dumbing-down of computer users by WIMP interfaces. Thirty years ago, there weren't a lot of totally naive computer users around. Now they're like flies at the city dump.