6502 Kicad Symbol Library

[Alarm Siren]

I'm aware that some of you have already found and made good use of it, and I have mentioned it a few times, but I don't believe I've ever actually "announced" it on this forum...

So, yeah, I made a Kicad symbol library that contains a bunch of 6502 and 6502-adjacent chips. I will be maintaining it for the foreseeable future, and I'm always happy to take requests to add new chips if people want them and (if necessary) can supply appropriate documentation. The library is licensed under LGPL 2.1, which makes it 100% kosher for use in your own projects, commercial or not.

You can find it here: https://github.com/Alarm-Siren/6502-kicad-library

I don't know if there's a suitable place on the main website, but if there is please feel free to add it as a community resource if you consider it appropriate to do so.

[wayfarer]

this is so helpful and saves so much time!

thank you so much !!

[barnacle]

I believe that's the one I've been using too - thanks!

Neil

[Alarm Siren]

Glad its been of use to you

[Alarm Siren]

I'm currently in the process of updating this library, and as part of that I'd like to include the long-promised VIC, VIC-II and VIC-IIe and TED.

However, I'd like to work from original datasheets if possible. I can see that the VIC is covered in the document archive, but the VIC-II only has a preliminary datasheet covering a single variant (unreliable); the VIC-IIe and TED appear not to have any documents at all.

Does anyone know where I might find these documents?

[barnacle]

I just tried to install this library for Kicad 9.0.2 for linux 6.8.0-60-generic x86_64 - and it failed with an error saying that the zip did not contain a valid metadata.json file.

Don't know any more about it; it won't let me try and load from the unwrapped text, and cheekily changing the last section to

Code: Select all

    "versions": [
        {
            "version": "3.0.0",
            "status": "stable",
            "kicad_version": "9.0"
        }
    ]

sadly did not work

Neil

[tingo]

Hmm, it worked fine for me just now, installed into KiCad 9.0.2 on Debian 12.11

Code: Select all

tingo@z30b:~$ cat /etc/debian_version 
12.11
tingo@z30b:~$ uname -a
Linux z30b 6.1.0-37-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.140-1 (2025-05-22) x86_64 GNU/Linux

tingo@z30b:~$ sudo apt list --installed kicad
Listing... Done
kicad/stable-backports,now 9.0.2+dfsg-1~bpo12+1 amd64 [installed]
N: There is 1 additional version. Please use the '-a' switch to see it

No error messages, and I could add components from the library.

[Alarm Siren]

barnacle wrote:

I just tried to install this library for Kicad 9.0.2 for linux 6.8.0-60-generic x86_64 - and it failed with an error saying that the zip did not contain a valid metadata.json file.

Don't know any more about it; it won't let me try and load from the unwrapped text, and cheekily changing the last section to

Code: Select all

    "versions": [
        {
            "version": "3.0.0",
            "status": "stable",
            "kicad_version": "9.0"
        }
    ]

sadly did not work

Neil

I've had someone report a similar issue before. In their case it was apparently fixed by simply restarting Kicad, but failing that I can only suggest to make sure you're following the readme instructions precisely, including making sure you've grabbed the correct zip file. The kicad version in the metadata file is not relevant to the issue, as its a minimum version only.

P.S. Apologies for the delay in providing support (such as it is), I no longer frequent this forum regularly.

[barnacle]

Thanks, AS; I'll give it another go.

Neil

[barnacle]

To confirm; I tried again last night (new Kicad, latest version, on a new (to me) laptop) and all went well. The names of some of the things your instructions reference have changed slightly in version 9, but no problems finding them.

Thanks!

Neil