list of chip dissections

[ttlworks]

Shameless advertisement:
Frank (fhw72) currently has to pay a lab 2.5k€ for decapping of one chip.
To cover some part of these cots, he sells vectorized printings of the chips (printed on Aluminium, for instance).
68000 printed on Aluminium, 75cm * 66cm:

Bigger picture here:

68000.zip

(2.59 MiB) Downloaded 169 times

;===
Interesting off_site dissections:

GitHub emu-russia: dissection of NMOS 65xx CPU core and NES chips //Nintendo Entertainment System
pastraiser.com: 65CE02 dissection
zimmers.net: C64 PLA dissected by Thomas ’skoe’ Giesel

;---

List of chip dissections in our forum:

[Aug 2024] CSG 5721R0 Amiga BUSTER //A2000 Expansion Bus arbiter, CMOS.
[Jul 2024] MOS 6571 Amiga Keyboard controller //6500/1 microcontroller

[Dec 2023] Rockwell R6545R1 CRT controller
[Jul 2023] MOS 8364R7 Amiga Paula //4 channel PCM audio + interrupt controller + analog joysticks + UART + floppy controller
[Mar 2023] CSG 8551R2 HMOS-II implementation of the 6551 UART

[Dec 2022] CSG 5719 Amiga GARY //small CMOS gate array //some CMOS basics explained.
[Dec 2022] MOS 6520 PIA, cousin of MC6820\MC6821 //and of W65C21 somehow.
[Nov 2022] MOS 8521 C64\C128 CIA //BCD TOD, HMOS-II implementation of the 6526
[Oct 2022] MOS 8520 Amiga\1581 CIA //binary TOD
[Jul 2022] MOS 6522 VIA
[Apr 2022] Nintendo Entertainment System PPU\APU Your princess is in another castle.
[Jan 2022] MOS 6525 CBM-II\1551 TPI //6523 is a 6525 subset, 6529 is a 6523 subset.

[Dec 2021] MOS 6509 CBM-II CPU + MMU //full dissection of the NMOS 65xx CPU core.
[Oct 2021] MOS 8726 C64\C128 REU //RAM extention unit
[Jul 2021] MOS 6530 KIM-1 RRIOT //6532 is a 6530 variation.
[Jul 2021] MOS 6702 SuperPET dongle chip
[May 2021] MOS 8501 C16\+4 CPU //C64 8500\6510 is a 8501 subset.

[Sep 2018] MOS 8701 C64 clock generator chip
[Jun 2016] MOS SID C64\C128 famous/infamous sound chip

;---

The stone quarry:

(was planned) STMicroelectronics EF9367 PET, NKC Graphic Display Processor
(was planned) MOS 8373R4 Amiga ECS-DENISE
(was planned) U880 Bugfixed Z80; GDR clone

(microscopic pictures) MOS 6572R1 C64 VIC-II PAL-N latest revision
(microscopic pictures) MOS 6567R9 C64 VIC-II NTSC latest revision
(microscopic pictures) MOS 6569R5 C64 VIC-II PAL
(microscopic pictures) MOS 6526R4 C64\C128 "Old" CIA; NMOS
(microscopic pictures) MOS 6560 VIC-20 VIC-I NTSC
(microscopic pictures) MOS 8360R2 and MOS8360R3 C16\+4 TED
(microscopic pictures) MOS 8365 C16\+4 TED PAL-N
(microscopic pictures) MOS 252535-01 C64C Memory Controller
(microscopic pictures) CSG 8375 Amiga ECS-AGNUS
(microscopic pictures) MOS 8362 Amiga DENISE
(microscopic pictures) Z80A (Z8400APS)

(partly vectorized) CSG 6581R4AR C64\C128 SID
(dissection in progress) MOS 6561R0 VIC-20 VIC-I PAL

(vectorized) MOS 8580R5 C64\C128 HMOS-II implementation of the SID
(vectorized) SSI263AP / Votrax SC-02 speech synthesis chip

(failed) WD1772PH02-02 floppy controller

;---

6561R0 dissection is in progress.
I'm hanging in there... somehow...

Work in Progress:

[GARTHWILSON]

Wow, what a wealth to have here!  Thank you!

[BigEd]

Very nice and handy list - and a glimpse of the future too. Thanks!

[fhw72]

ttlworks wrote:

.......
;---

The stone quarry:

(planned) MOS 6567R9 C64 VIC-II NTSC latest revision
(planned) MOS 6572R1 C64 VIC-II PAL-N latest revision
(planned) MOS 8373R4 Amiga ECS_DENISE
(planned) U880 Bugfixed Z80; GDR clone

"Planned" means:

We already have bought the chips but they are not decapped and pictured (yet).
Depends on motivation and financial situation.

[fhw72]

ttlworks wrote:

(planned) MOS 6572R1 C64 VIC-II PAL-N latest revision

The microscopic pictures of the 6572R1 are ready...

https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapos ... 95d9b17862

[ttlworks]

December 2023: working conditions became too bad to go on with chip dissections, so I had to stop.

April 2024: trying to restart chip dissections.

Working conditions still are bad, but now at least I have suitable coffee again. Woot.

[BigEd]

Coffee is good! Suitable coffee must be even better! Glad things have picked up a bit.

[fachat]

Glad situation has improved!

And good coffee of course is a must!

[ttlworks]

Ed and André, thanks for the kind words.
It's quite difficult doing things like chip dissectios if one can't focus/concentrate.

;...

Another thing that made it difficult for me to stay focused/concentrated:

I was the owner of an apartment, the renter had ruined it, and I wasn't able to get him out.
Unfortunately, the father of the renter appeared to be CEO of an obscure estate company,
and they had a very good lawyer who is specialised in writing "Cease and desist" letters
(the "Gravenreuth" sort of type).

So when I sent the renter a "proper notice of termination",
I instantly got sued in return, and stumbled into a legalese battle which wasn't over after 2 years.

The only thing I could do "to be able to life a normal live again" was selling apartment + renter.
Financial loss about 16k€ so far in total (not good for my retiremend fund), but I'm happy it's over...
...I think.

Point is, that I bought the apartment from money I put aside from my income over the years,
and me and my parents put some time/work/effort into keeping said apartment in a good condition.
It just is, that some people have absolutely no respect for the time/money/property of others.

[fachat]

I can feel you. I have had a renter, not half as bad as yours, but still threatening to drag me to court. Luckily that is gone. It's really a bad feeling!
I hope for you that it is over and that you can look forward now!
André

[BigDumbDinosaur]

ttlworks wrote:

I was the owner of an apartment, the renter had ruined it, and I wasn't able to get him out...

These so-called squatters are becoming quite the problem here in the states.  Often, it’s the same story: renter won’t pay the rent or trashes the apartment and then refuses to vacate when requested.  The landlord ends up spending a lot of time and money in evicting the squatter.  In some states, squatters actually have rights, which I find to be absolutely ridiculous.  How can someone have a right to something that they don’t own?  (Rhetorical question.)

So I sympathize with you.  Being a landlord, as you were, can be a financial risk unless you can thoroughly vet your tenants.

[ttlworks]

André and BDD, thanks for the compassion.

Here in Germany, the law is on the side of the renter, not on the side of the landlord.
To me, the worst thing when flatfootedly stumbling into a legalese battle (without having a legal protection insurance)
involving avocados... err... advocates was, that at some point I had to keep track who said/wrote what to whom/when/why.

After two years, that pile of paper became quite high, and keeping it sorted and updated took me some work/time/effort.
It drove me nuts to waste time with "pushing papers" instead of doing something useful... like dissecting chips, for instance.

The renter had not told us that the police busted the front door (and why), we noticed the damage by accident with a six months delay.
Funny thing is: the renter was stupid enough to throw away the original key cylinder of the door (master keyed system for 114 apartments).

But enough of this madness, now back to the things in life that really count: eventually doing some more 6502 tinkering.

[frenchshark]

Hello,
first, thank you for this amazing work, it will be very usefull for chip replacement with FPGAs.
My name is Frédéric, I have started RE of Alice chip (MOS 8374R3) in January 2024, based on John McMaster picture.
Even if it is a big beast, it is quite "easy" because most of the original Alice schematics was leaked in 2020. It is like having a rosetta stone
8375 and 8372 chips are just a subset of Alice, it might be good to start with Alice ?

I also started running verilog simulation in parallel using KiCAD 6.0 and Verilator.
See : https://github.com/fredrequin/nmos_sim

I know quite well the Amiga chipset, I already wrote a full Amiga verilog core.
BTW, concerning the question about Paula and the floppy disk controller, there are few patents on the subject (maybe you know them already) :
- US4829473 : Paula https://patents.google.com/patent/US4829473A/en
- US4780844 : MFM DPLL https://patents.google.com/patent/US4780844A/en

Frédéric

[BigEd]

(Welcome, Frédéric!)

[ttlworks]

Hello Frédéric,
and welcome to our forum.

Thanks for the kind words and the appreciation.

We were not aware of these Paula related patents, thanks for posting the links.

Frank and me had started with the 6502 related chips first. //Hey, it's a 6502 forum.
Dissections of the Amiga chipsent tend to be quite big, a bit too big for just two guys (me and Frank).
So we only tried to do Amiga related dissections when we had some free capacity.