Introduce yourself

[BigDumbDinosaur]

Aslak3 wrote:

My interest in computers started with the Spectrum, before moving onto Amigas, and more lately, Linux. My day job is as a perl/C/network dev.

Welcome to our 6502 world.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

James_Parsons wrote:

Apparently everyone thinks I'm a spambot. So I was told to reply here. I am a 15 year old kid. I am NOT a spambot. I prefer 70's and 80's computers over modern ones (people call me weird for that ). I think the 6502 has an amazing architecture with simplicity and power. Also the manual garth mentioned to me is gone :O I have done high level programming and some x86 assembly. I do plan within the next 3 years to build an SBC with both the 6502 and the 6800. Again I am not a spambot so please, please don't ban me. I hope sometime to become part of the community like GARTHWISON BigDumbDinosaur and others who have numerous links on the site and seem to know people

Now that we know that you aren't an android from the west end of Andromeda, welcome. I attached a PDF copy of the WDC 65xx programming manual to this post, which covers pretty much everything you would need to know to start writing 65xx assembly language programs. As Garth suggested, it's best to focus on the 8 bit stuff first, especially the 65C02. When the time comes and you want to build a functioning unit, the 65C02 should be your first choice.

One of the best ways to get comfortable with the 65xx architecture and assembly language is by playing around with a simulator. A popular one has been the Kowlaski simulator, which is available right here (it runs on NT kernel versions of Windows). I have made extensive use of the Kowalski simulator, having developed the firmware for my POC unit (65C816-powered) in it.

Look at this post for some friendly advice about getting questions answered and learning about things in general. We were all your age at one time and lacking knowledge about something, so we do know something about being the "new kid on the block." Most of the members here are well-versed in computer hardware, know their way around an assembler, plus have developed the personal discipline that is needed to understand complicated technology and build something from it. Prudent questioning will get you plenty of help, if you have shown that you have made an effort to do the research grunt-work.

[BitWise]

BitWise wrote:

I kept my BBC until 1991 when it was sold to a local school and I got my first PC. I wish now that I had kept it and am very tempted to buy one off eBay. I found an excellent emulator in the late 90's and used to take a BBC Advanced User Guide with me on business trips so I could write code in my hotel room.

Much to my wife's annoyance I bought a BBC Micro second hand at the weekend. After 20+ years in storage a capacitor in the PSU promptly burst when it was switched on (a common BBC failure pattern) but after a quick repair its back up and running.

I also bought a NES for the kids . Two 6502 retro-machines in one week!

[Aslak3]

James_Parsons wrote:

Apparently everyone thinks I'm a spambot...

I recommend contemporary books on these subjects. Something by Rodney Zacks is a good bet. I have his 6809 book and learned loads from it. What ideas have you for your SBC? Remember, start simple and don't try to do everything at once. I started with an MPU, an EEPROM, and a latch. I was stunned when I powered on the breadboard and saw my test pattern flash across the LEDs.

Lawrence

[BigDumbDinosaur]

BitWise wrote:

Much to my wife's annoyance I bought a BBC Micro second hand at the weekend.

Wives are always getting annoyed when we purchase stuff like a BBC (or a C-128D in my case). Yet they expect us to be happy as pigs in the mud after they've gone shopping and blown hundreds of $$$, €€€ or £££ on the latest fashions.

[BigEd]

Spouses, BDD. And spare us the caricature.
Cheers
Ed

[lordbubsy]

I’d like to say *HELLO* to all of you. My name is Marco, I’m 47 and I’m living in the Netherlands.

My occupation was electrician, but due to a severe illness I cannot do that work anymore. So I’m at home, and at good days I tinker with electronics, and at bad days I read about electronics.

My computer adventure began 1979, and so far I had:

Philips G7000 with VIDEOPAC 9 (among others).
1982: TI-99/4A with Extended BASIC.
1985: Commodore 64. (rather late, but it was my first real love. I bought it myself.)
1987: Commodore 128 (the most sophisticated 8-bitter I know of) ;-P
Commodore Amiga 500 for a very short time, I didn’t like it.
PC-AT 286 13MHz. Following a long line of PeeCees.
At that time I had no Commodore computer anymore, but luckily I kept all the books, cartridges, EPROM burner etc.

1996 I dove in the world of retro computing by collecting all kind of Commodore 64 stuff. 2011 I became aware of the VIC-20 and fell in love with the design and began to understand (at least a little) its inner workings.

My “lab” is equipped with:
A humble 20MHz dual ray scope from 1978 (Hameg 512).
A homemade TTL Logic Probe with buzzer.
Recently I bought a SCANALOGIC-2 EDU-KIT (http://www.ikalogic.com/scanakit/)
I have a bunch of 74HCTxxx’s and a small stock of basic electronic components. Every time I order something, I order some extra quantities, well the cheap ones at least
Regarding 65xx I have some MOS/Rockwell chips, no WDC (yet).
Recently I managed to make double sided PCB’s with satisfying results. Using EAGLE, a laser printer and a laminator with AVR controlled temperature regulation.

As a 65xx programming “toolchain” I prefer the ACME Cross-Assembler with the free available TextPad 5.4.2.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/acme-crossass/
http://www.textpad.com/download/textpad45.html
It has Syntax Highlighting and one can assemble and execute binaries on an emulator (VICE) or transfer and execute it on the real hardware at the touch of a button. For AVR tinkering I use Arduino and lately Atmel Studio 6.1. To make my first steps with CPLD I installed ISE 8.1 on an aged WinXP P4 with LPT port. I’ll build a parallel programmer with a test board for a XC9572. But I am far from designing something myself, like address decoding or a simple video device. For now I’d be happy to replicate Daryl's 65SPI!

I stumbled into this forum through the VERONICA project. Since then I’v been lurking here and a lot of my questions have been answered by reading several threads and primers.

At the moment I’m prototyping on breadboards with 1-2 MHz 65xx, which is very rewarding! I have a minimal first design going with Lee’s EhBASIC.

Eventually I’d like to build a full featured expandable SBC on which I can program and expand with I/O devices.

Regards,
Marco

[whartung]

lordbubsy wrote:

I’d like to say *HELLO* to all of you. My name is Marco, I’m 47 and I’m living in the Netherlands.
At the moment I’m prototyping on breadboards with 1-2 MHz 65xx, which is very rewarding! I have a minimal first design going with Lee’s EhBASIC.

Welcome Marco, thanks for sharing the photo of your project. Be fun to hear more. Here's to more good days than bad.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

lordbubsy wrote:

I’d like to say *HELLO* to all of you. My name is Marco, I’m 47 and I’m living in the Netherlands...

Welcome. That's a very colorful breadboard you have. Quinn Dunki (Veronica) would be pleased to know that her project got you interested in trying out the 6502.

[BigEd]

Welcome Marco! Always good to see a shot of a breadboard project.

[lordbubsy]

Thanks for the welcome!
Well, I don’t know if I’m too happy with that picture , but I’m glad it Works.

Quote:

Quinn Dunki (Veronica) would be pleased to know that her project got you interested in trying out the 6502.

I told her, and she is!

[scotws]

Hi Marco, welcome. Glad to see somebody else with love for the VIC-20. Those were the days!

[mkl0815]

Ok, it's half a year that I joined this awesome forum. I think, it's time to introduce myself now
My name is Mario and I live in a village near Berlin, the capital of Germany. I work as a system administrator in a datacenter on a really high level (compared to the things we're discussing here) of system integration and -management, but still low enough to make our customers think I'm a "Wizard of the OS" (sorry, couldn't resist).
I'm addicted to computers since I was 9 or 10 years old. Growing up in the eastern part of Germany (former GDR) it was difficult to get my hands on a computer. I learned BASIC from books and computer magazines long before I could proof my knowledge on a real machine. Since then it was my dream to build my own system, but I was missing the knowledge and even the chance to buy the parts to get this done. So it stayed a dream for nearly 30 years. Later my parents spent a lot of money getting a used C64 and later a floppy station. Spending hours before the little black'n'white TV-set connected to my C64 ended up in wearing glasses now. But beside playing games I made my first steps in assembler. Even opcodes became important to me, because the second joystick port (used by 75% of all games) of my C64 was broken for one direction (no chance to get it repaired in the eastern part of Germany this times) and I figured out to check the game data for "AD 01 DC" and turn it to "AD 00 DC" what worked fine for about 50% of the programs, making them read port one instead of port two. After the reunion of the both parts of Germany I got an Amiga 500 and spent more time in playing games, then writing programs. Programming became important again during my study and later work, but on a high level like Java, C/C++, script languages and even such strange things like PostScript or a language called "beta"
About two years ago a colleague found the Arduino project and again I was infected by the tinkering virus, building things like a weatherstation for our house, several LED lamps, a automatic steplight for the stairs of the house for some friends. This project was the first complete PCB I created in my life (same strange wiring then my EEPROM programmer prototype) and the first project with only discrete components and a bare metal ATMega328. This was close enough to bring the dream of my own 8bit machine back to my mind and I started looking around what others had done with that idea.
That was the time I found this forum ... and the rest is history

The picture shows the current stage of my dream. A W65C02 running at 1MHz, connected to a 74HC138 used for address decoding, a 8k AT28C64 EEPROM at $E000 and two "support" chips (74HC00 and 74HC04) to be able to combine and invert signals. At the moment there's no RAM yet, so programming is a bit annoying because I have no stack, only registers, but for small tests it's ok. My little bus-sniffer showing on the photo is connected to a 74HC574 octal D-flipflop used as simple 8-bit output directly addressed by writing to the mapped address ($c000). A second 75HC574 is connected as 8-bit input, also directly addressed by reading from $a000. Later I will try to combine both ICs in a setup that needs only one address. Write goes to the output pins and read get data from the input pins. By costs of only a few cents per chip this is a real cheap method adding a lot of I/O lines to a system. I know that there a VIAs and I will add them too, but for learning how things work, this first step necessary to learn about interfering signals on a bus systems if more then one component is writing to the bus at the same time
Next step will be adding a 6532 RIOT to get some RAM to the system, making things like programming much easier. Getting I/O lines and a timer on top makes it even better.

So stay tuned for more long (sorry for that ) stories from the "old world".

Mario.

[BigEd]

Great to hear your story!

[ElEctric_EyE]

Welcome Mario & Marco. Great to have you guys with us!