Well, I am a "kid" (teenager..) who is very interested in electronics, programming and computer science. I have recently become very interested in processors and how they work and the 6502 has been my learning point. I don't have any hardware really, but thats fine for me because I would in most cases prefer to write an emulator anyway. Currently I am designing my own simple processor called the 65S4ME. I will have information on my site (sci4me.com) as soon as I get around to putting it online. I am writing an emulator for it and if that goes well I may put it onto my FPGA. I will probably have some more posts about that processor and the design process later on.

Well, glad to have you aboard. We have a lot of members, some of which have scratch-built 6502 powered contraptions, others that are interested in classic 6502 designs (e.g., the KIM) and still others that are interested in modeling the 6502 in an FPGA. I'm sure you'll find plenty here that is interesting. Be sure to look at the projects, code, resources and tools pages, as there is a lot to be seen. Also, some of us run our own websites about our creations.

BTW, being a "kid" isn't a liability. We were all kids at one time, except me. I was hatched in a swamp and am just about the oldest bloke hanging out around here. From my viewpoint, almost everyone here is a "kid."

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Welcome, sci4me, look forward to seeing your projects as they develop!

Hey guys,

Back in the 80s a friend of mine showed me a TV show called "Whiz Kids". It was horrid and unwatchable. But, the premise of the show was that these kids built a computer. From that day forward, I always wanted to do that. I used to stare at the Radio Shack catalog trying to find the right combination of parts and try to figure out how to hook it up. In college I learned how, but never seemed to have the time. Recently, I got interested in doing it again. With the help of this Garth's tutorials and the junk box I've accumulated over the years I was able to make this a reality.

It's a pretty basic configuration - 1Mhz 65C02, 32K SRAM, 8K ROM, 6551 and 6522. Used wire wrap construction and kept it to a single board. It's working great and I'm planning on adding a speaker and SD card next and fully connectorizing it.

Congratulations, Justin! I guess you're basking in a "Whiz Kid" sort of glow, and you may as well enjoy it -- having earned it!

I have a few minor suggestions regarding your schematic, but I don't wish to embark on a discussion here in the Introduce Yourself thread. Would you like to start a new thread in the Hardware section perhaps? You could link the two if you wish...

best regards,
Jeff

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In 1988 my 65C02 got six new registers and 44 new full-speed instructions!
https://laughtonelectronics.com/Arcana/ ... mmary.html

Sure. I'll append it to the "Bill Of Materials" thread.

Looks good—and it works, which is the important thing.

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Hey Justin, great work. And I'm glad somebody else is also drawing their designs by hand .

You wouldn't want to try reading some of my sketches. Even I have trouble reading them.

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Hi,

first of all, thanks to Mike for making me an account. I've been lurking a bit in here as I have two 6502 projects in the pipeline. One is a SBC to use as a simple console and the other one will eventually be a full blown machine with all the bells and whistles. Currently I am looking at making a state machine for VGA signal output, preferably without using a CPLD or FPGA, unless the whole thing will become a huge mess of timing issues. I do have both CPLD's, PALs and GALs that I just bought on a shopping spree on ebay for these projects, but for my own understanding, I'd love to do it with 7400 logic when ever possible, as it will also serve me as a base for explaining my GF what the various components do in the small project.

Regards,
Jorgen

Welcome to our 6502 world. Be sure to start a topic on your project, especially the idea of generating VGA via 74xxx logic.

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

I noticed I didn't have an introduction online in this thread yet...

For my first experiences with computers, I'll refer to my post in the Nostalgia forum from yesterday:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2805&p=31044#p31024

Short version and additional info:

I grew up in the Netherlands, and met the PET-2001 in 1978 when I was 11. I played around with it, and with a CBM-4032 at my high school, until we got an IBM PC at home and I graduated. I always remained interested in the 6502 but I never owned a 6502 system in the 1980s or 1990s. I do remember spending a vacation in France reading all the Elektor Junior books, and someone once asked if I could reverse-engineer and update a 6502-based ventilation controller which I started on but never finished, that's about it.

It took until 2008 or so (after I emigrated to the USA) until I found out that there were so many retro and 6502 enthusiasts online, here and elsewhere. I bought a MicroKim from http://www.brielcomputers.com and helped my stepson solder it together, which was a lot of fun. And I found out that I live in the city where Western Design Center has their office, and I must have passed by it hundreds of times without even knowing about its existence, when my wife worked at a job on the same street.

Almost 3 years ago I started on a project called Propeddle (http://www.propeddle.com) which will be a kit that lets a Parallax Propeller bitbang a 6502 at 1Mhz. This should make it possible to emulate early 6502 computers such as the KIM-1, SYM-1, PET/CBM and many others that didn't use custom chips. It should also let you create new "Software Defined" 6502 computers that never existed as hardware before. Having a Propeller will help with the bringup of a system: Even if it's not connected to a PC via a serial port, the Propeller can run a program that lets you use the video and keyboard to inspect and modify any ROM images that it will expose to the 6502; it may even be possible to put an assembler/disassembler on board to sort-of create your own 6502 computer bring-up hobby kit.

At the time of this writing, Propeddle apparently almost works: I can run the 6502 at 0.9MHz (88 Propeller clocks per 6502 cycle) but when I run it at full speed (80 clocks), something goes wrong; I will need to hook it up to my logic analyzer to find out what it is. I also have to re-write some of the software including the part that uses the NMI on the 6502 to download data from the Propeller to the RAM. I also have to design a new circuit board: the current PCB requires a Propeller Platform motherboard and a Propeller Platform video/keyboard interface that has to be modified because I use non-standard pins. But not only is the Propeller Platform more or less discontinued; there were also practical problems like the need for expensive, hard to find, stacking connectors. The new PCB will have everything on one board (Propeller, EEPROM, WDC65C02S, RAM, glue logic, connectors for expansion, TTL serial port, keyboard (PS/2) and video (TV and VGA). I may also make a "low cost" kit that will require a Quickstart (http://www.parallax.com/product/40000). I also have some ideas for hardware expansion with an SD card reader and/or a second Propeller, for the systems that are more difficult to emulate because they have custom chips, such as the C-64 or Nintendo.

The reason that I'm not making much headway with my Propeddle project is that I don't have a lot of spare time and I also have some other projects I'm working on, one of which is the OSI Superboard Replica project by Vince Briel (http://www.brielcomputers.com/phpBB3/vi ... =36&t=1515). I met Vince at the Bay Area Maker Faire in 2012 and we talked about his projects and mine; we exchanged some information and I helped him integrate some of my ideas into his schematics and software which made the emulation more precise, and reduced the number of components (for example, no EPROMs are required: the Propeller emulates the ROMs). The OSI replica will basically be a specialized version of the Propeddle project. Meanwhile, I also learned from his ideas, and learned a lot about the Ohio Scientific computers (of which the UK101 was a clone) which are very simple but surprisingly versatile!

===Jac

Awesome, welcome Jac!

Your name is very similar to Jens Gutschmidt. I reviewed his 6502 softcore.

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65Org16:https://github.com/ElEctric-EyE/verilog-6502

Hello to everybody, it's about 3 months I joined this forum so I wanted to give an introduction of myself.

Of course I'm here because I was searching something regarding 6502 CPUs in the internet. Not the real 6502 but about emulating a 6502 on AVR mikrocontrollers. The reason was that I got into an argument where the others stated that a AVR is way too slow to emulate a full 6502 based system. Man were they wrong. Because when I saw the emulators in this forum I thought that they are really cool.

My interest in 6502 rises from the fact, that when I was almost 30 years old I finally bought my first computer, a second hand Apple IIplus for 200 CHF with Floppy but without monitor. Before over years I always wanted to own my own computer to tinker with it. But at that time I neither had the money nor the know-how to build my own system. As a kid I started with electronics but none of my projects were digital, it was either LF or HF, I built a RC for my RC models. The most notable project that I finished was an upgrade of an old B/W TV set with a remote control and hacking the tuners so that instead of VHF and UHF they were capable of receiving CaTV channels. In my first job I really got close to the digital world. Already during my studies I started to write a lot of computer programs, at that time APL was a big hype and my favorite language. I still think APL is cool to write, especially if you are a mathematician. At my job I learned the pros of assembler, was introduced into the subject of real-time programming on a PDP-11 and started to like the digital world, at the end you could say I knew every bit of RSX-11M by it's name, if you write interrupt driven device drivers this is a must. Many colleagues then owned either an AIM-65 or a homebrew 6502 system, and one even spent the money to buy an apple. At that time it was worth a months salary or more, especially in Switzerland where at that time computers were 40-70% more expensive than in the states. So not only did I learn and started to like assembler but also digital electronics. With one of my friend, I learned at the job, I was introduced into the digital world of electronics and 6502 based SBCs . We programmed games and played them on his AIM-65 which he as enhanced with a video controller and later even with a floppy controller. Then I quit the job and entered the telecommunication business but still wanted to start my own digital projects. That's when I got the chance to buy this Apple and as at that time my friend was building his floppy controller for the AIM-65 I thought about building my own standard Floppy controller for the Apple and hack DOS 3.3 to support it. And it really worked. Later I built many other cards for my Apple like a 80-col video card, a EEPROM programmer, a GAL programmer, a IDE Interface until I decided to build my own 6502 based computer. At that time the 65SC816 (from GTE) was available so I decided the system must be compatible with an Apple IIe and be based on the GTE CPU. This is and was by far my biggest working project. Here is a picture of the overall system.

Over years, I think almost 3 years, I designed, built and modified the system and the current version you see here was finished in 1998. Everything is hand-made, from the schematics to the card-slot-cage. Today it still works (the picture was taken today), only one of the column driver ICs of the LCD panel is broken. I also did some other smaller projects using 6502 SBCs (one was a PS/2 interface to my system) but then for a long period did not have time for my hobby any more. Until recently when my youngest brother asked me to help him with electronics because he decided to start a second education and he had no clue about that subject, which however is very important at his course. So I started to dig out all my electronics material again that was put away in boxes and started again tinkering with electronics, SBCs etc. As AVR microcontrollers were one of the subjects at the school of my brother and from the past I still had my AVR development platform I was also looking up the internet to get more information and support about AVR microcontrollers and we did many small projects. But even AVR MCU are cool, I thought they lack some features that I liked so much about 6502 based systems. Especially the ability to assemble a small program on the system itself and have it run immediately from RAM. But on the other hand you need to add all IO yourself to the system. Emulating a 6502 on a AVR perfectly combines both worlds I think and the projects described here are the reason I joined this forum. Thats when I started my own emulator based on Daryl's code (with some parts taken from Klaus project). The result is that I'm again infected with the 6502 virus and decided that my next project will be another real 65C816 based SBC. But this time I want it to have all features that 20 years ago were either too expensive, too complicated or not available for non-commercial users. But thanks to the internet these problems disappeared. Gradually the material I have ordered is arriving and I have started the detailed design of my new system.

This forum is really cool and the information about 6502 and the support you can find here regarding this subject is really great. It's nice to see that the 6502 is still alive.

Peter

Welcome Peter, I'm guessing you used wire-wrap, for the interconnect underneath those boards, as those sockets look like the machine tooled type?

I would like to read some of how you did your IDE interface hardware. I'm trying to interface to an IDE HDD using a specialized interface IC, but it may be overkill on my part, not sure. What kind of through-put did you have with the hardware you used? Can you estimate?

I think this community here would be very interested in a 6502 hardware interface to a modern style IDE HDD. BDD has used his SCSI interface successfully, which is impressive, but IDE is more common and thus cheaper. Please start a new thread if you desire, but no pressure!

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65Org16:https://github.com/ElEctric-EyE/verilog-6502