I've dabbled a little with electronics (v simple, few or no ICs) and played with arduinos, feathers, etc but am far from expert at reading IC datasheets, understanding clocks and so on. I'm curious to tinker with some 6502 hardware but not sure if I want to start completely from scratch.

Maybe I should build BE's simple-as-possible 8-bit breadboard thing to improve my basic skills but it seems like a big investment (both time and $$) for something that doesn't have much utility afterward?

I wondered if there was something more like the old 1970s kits (Altair, heath kit) where you could build a working machine from a kit, learn something about hardware debugging, and end up with something you could tinker with both hardware and software?

It certainly doesn't need to be "purist" like building a replica apple ][ with original NTSC video or whatever. In fact I'd kind of prefer if it was more plug and play with modern hardware. I don't really know what I"m talking about, but for example perhaps it could share the memory bus with an Arduino mega or the like so you could implement external code that maps the 6502's RAM onto a modern display in whatever form you wanted, or let the 6502 talk to an external file system via a simple memory mapped IO block, a bit like py65 provides magic getch/putch via r/w to $f001/$f004 (btw any history of why those two particular addresses?).

The closest thing I've seen is https://planck6502.com/ but maybe I'm not looking in the right places? I've also seen the WDC development board but that doesn't look like I'd learn much about hardware.

I admit I'm pretty fuzzy about my actual goals but does anyone have newbie advice in this direction?

Best,
Patrick

I don't know of kits, offhand, but there are plenty of small and simple designs. Grant Searle's designs might be a good starting point. The minimum kind of peripheral is a serial connection: with that, you have input and output, and it's possible, if you wish, to build software layers which can allow for filesystems, graphics, or indeed networking on top of such a serial connection.

I wouldn't recommend approaching this as a one-time choice for the best possible project which allows you to do everything - better perhaps to view your first build as the first step on a journey. Your second, or third, projects can do more, and you'll have more experience to help you on your way.

The big question is whether you already have a flash programmer like TL866 and whether you are willing to buy one. It is a $70 investment and many newcomers are reluctant to purchase such a specialized equipment only good for retro computing. Having a flash programmer, your choice of 6502 kits is much bigger, but without a flash programmer, it is limited to kits that'll supply pre-programmed flash or the few that do not need flash programmer.
Bill

The closest to a kit right now might be the Ben Eater one. It's built on a breadboard and (I think) you can still buy it. Just search for Ben Eater 6502 - there is a YouTube series to accompany it. It's not to everyones liking but you get all the bits to get you going.

In time past, there were a few kits - The Acorn System 1 and the Elektor Junior Computer to name 2. These come up on ebay from time to time.

There are also Kim-1 and Sym-1 - Kim-1 clones have been made and you might be able to find them...

I don't think there were any produced back then with switches and LEDs (like Altair) - but search for Cactus 6502 to find a modern version (a personal project, not a kit though).

For other "real" 6502 systems - BBC Micros are easy to get hold of - BBC Basic has a built-in assembler thats a bit odd at first, but easy to get the hang of (and you get to write assembler macros in BASIC)

Hope you get something.

Cheers,

-Gordon

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Gordon Henderson.
See my Ruby 6502 and 65816 SBC projects here: https://projects.drogon.net/ruby/

One of the famous 6502 kits from back in the day was the Compukit UK101. It was a clone of the OSI SuperBoard II.

However, nothing like that is available any more.

Kit's of that type may not be the best way to learn about the hardware as you are just following an assembly guide. Ben Eater's kit and his videos will teach you a lot more, but you do need to assemble some stuff not included in teh kit like an EPROM programmer and whatever software he uses in his development cycle. You don't end up with something that will run a high level language like BASIC, so you'll have to learn assembler. You will learn a lot, and once you've finished his program you can take stab a designing your own.

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Bill

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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?

I observe two recurring problems with 6502 kit computers: #1, they tend to be really expensive. #2, they tend to sell out quickly, in spite of #1. The MiniPET is a good example of both. The PAL-1 might be just the thing that Patrick is looking for, but apparently it's not shipping currently.

It might be worth pointing out that Ben Eater's "simple as possible" project is not 6502 related, but a separate 8-bit architecture from an old electronics textbook. His 6502 project was called something like "hello world from scratch," and has since expanded into a whole separate series of videos.

If you don't want to start from scratch, but you also don't mind sourcing your own parts, there are some potentially good options that involve ordering your own PCBs, such as the RC6502 (both an SBC and a backplane version), the Planck (as you noted), and a variety of recreations of vintage motherboards (search around on tindie to find many examples). There's even an SBC version of Ben Eater's 6502 that is compatible with the RC6502.

In case no one has pointed this out to you yet, Garth (GARTHWILSON) has a whole computer schematic in his 6502 Primer along with extensive notes on every aspect of undertaking such a project. Edit: I see Garth posted to point this out while I was writing!

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"The key is not to let the hardware sense any fear." - Radical Brad

As a kit, unfortunately true. However, you can get replica PCBs of those old trainers, if that's what you're looking for. There are a lot of them on tindie, for example: https://www.tindie.com/products/glitchw ... cpu-board/

Edit: Actually, I see they are in fact offering kit versions of that superboard replica. The parts kit is over $100, and the pre-assembled/tested kit is over $200! So, there's problem #1 rearing its ugly head again.

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"The key is not to let the hardware sense any fear." - Radical Brad

Ahh, very cool! But that is the 400 board, not the 600 board. The 400 board needs a lot of support hardware including a backplane. However there are sometimes 600 (Superboard II) bare boards available over on the OSI forum (https://osiweb.org/osiforum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=323). It's not inexpensive to put together though and sourcing the key caps and some other parts can be difficult.

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Bill

As has been mentioned kits are somewhat scarce and pricey, it depends on your skill set and interest.
I had a SYM-1 in the 80's (still have it), when I got interested again in the 6502. I followed Ben Eater's series originally and bought the components to start with. I had already done some Arduino and had basic supplies so when I got frustrated with doing this on a breadboard (likely not the best quality) and the wires flying out as things got more complicated I wanted to get on to a PCB. Not being a real hardware person (either in design or PCB layout) I approached Daryl Rictor about his SBC. He wasn't doing the boards anymore but referred me to Rich Cini who did a version of his SBC2.5. I ordered one and I was able to use the Ben Eater components and built that. As Plasmo said if you have a EEProm programmer you can do a lot of different things so I tried both Nick Gammon's GPascal on that board and also Paul Dourish's Secnd forth on that board also. I still have and use it but then there are other options from the good people here who have offered designs, insights and software. My path has been satisfying to me and I have benefited from Plasmo's offerings and have learned a lot from those, as well as looking at Grant Searle's website for his offerings.
One option that is interesting would be to look at the Youtube video from a fellow who started with Ben Eater and built a PCB with it including a terminal on board using Grant Searle's 2 AT Mega chips for PS2 keyboard and video out. https://github.com/The-Invent0r/6502-Computer-PCB
It may not be exactly what you looking for and may not be available from him (it's also a little limited by being faithful to Ben Eater's design).
Yes, you can emulate the 6502 in software on a PC or in FPGA form but it's nice to have it on real 6502 chips.
Hope you can have some fun in your journey!

As pointed out above, Grant Searle's minimal designs are an easy place to start though he does not publish board designs; his designs are simple enough to make on prototype boards though I would not recommend it for reasons I've expanded on elsewhere but largely fragility.

I have a circuit board based on Grant's design which I'd be happy to pass on (though annoyingly the forum software does not allow me to publish Kicad files) but it suffers from the same fault as most of the others: you need an eeprom/eprom programmer before you start. Which I also built - another PCB and an ARM Nucleo board to drive it, and some Linux software to get the software to the programmer...

This is the problem with any homebrew design. You can easily find yourself designing the whole toolchain. With Grant's design, he provides the binary of a Microsoft Basic from the seventies, so you don't need an assembler.

Many of the singe board development kits in the seventies and eighties (I initially used a Microtan 65) had the great advantage of video out that was suited to the TV standards of the time - NTSC or PAL - and also had either a hex-type keypad or an interface to a parallel ascii keyboard (or their own keyboard on-board). In my opinion these are the big deal breakers at the moment: the vast majority of inexpensive keyboards available are either USB or PS/2 standard the first of which is definitely not for the faint hearted and the second increasingly rare, and still requiring an amount of decoding before its output can be used. In these days of flat-screen TVs, you can have difficulty finding anything which will accept NTSC/PAL inputs; at a minimum you are probably looking at VGA, SVGA, or in many cases HDMI inputs only - although there are inexpensive NTSC/PAL -> HDMI adaptors available.

Grant's circuit avoids all this by using a serial line as the only I/O; it needs nothing more than a terminal emulator (or a real terminal if you happen to have one!) and text output is excellent though graphics are largely impossible.

Um. This may appear discouraging. It's not intended to be, just a note of some of the issues you'll find. It's an unfortunate fact that compared with ready to run parts like the Arduino, Nucleo, or Pi, the 6502 is forty years less capable and much more expensive (but at least PCBs are cheap these days). But on the other hand, the parts are big enough to see and the pins large enough to get a scope probe on!

My (Linux, but all these work on Windows too) toolchain includes:

• Logisim Evolution for testing logic ideas
• Kicad for circuit schematic and PCB design
• Kingswood Consulting's AS65 assembler: https://www.kingswood-consulting.co.uk/assemblers/
• SDCC C compiler: https://sdcc.sourceforge.net/
• plus sundry other self-written helper applications

Neil

With the BB830 breadboards I haven't really had issues with connections/wires flying out. This might also be a matter of, I really only have the base ram/rom/via/oscillator plus one chip for extra address decoding and the acia & driver/receiver - I didn't, and I'm not planning to, get more complicated than that. It did pretty quickly get to the point where tapping the Arduino in becomes impractical (and once you get the oscillator in to run at 1Mhz, not even that useful, either, although I suppose I could still do that and collect/display some sort of something).

I do, though, also want to get on to a PCB - although I'm interested in learning how to actually do that, so I don't know that it's relevant to a kit.

PAL-1, cheap, easy to build, well supported KIM-1 clone, lots of expansions.

https://www.tindie.com/products/tkoak/p ... puter-kit/ "Only 7 left in stock, order now!"

I haven't opened a store page for the kit yet but I've started selling partial GameTank kits by direct contact (i.e. face to face or just pop me an email). You source most of the parts yourself but it includes the boards for the system, two controllers, and an arduino-based flasher. It also has some of the parts that got harder to source since the project started, such as the dual-port RAMs and canned oscillator.

Admittedly like other 6502 kits it's not exactly cheap, on top of the parts in the kit you need to source around US$240 of additional parts. I designed the kit to use as many through-hole components as possible which limits the selection and raises the chip price a little, though it makes the soldering more straightforward.

It has more utility after the build than Ben Eater's I think, though that's mostly if you happen to enjoy retro gaming and game development.

With 12 VIA pins exposed on the back though it shouldn't be too hard to add a keyboard adapter for a more "computer" experience.