I'm new to the group, and I found this thread and topic fascinating, so I thought I'd chime in.

Jac touched upon something above, when he said that learning the 6502 and computer system built from it was "... an oasis of logic in a world that was going insane around me". Yes. And the world continues to go insane, seemingly at an accelerating pace. Creating a piece of computer software - understanding how it works - is like controlling a small corner of the universe- creating a little pocket of reverse entropy amongst all the chaos. I sometimes find people hard to deal with- they don't act in predictable ways, don't call you back, don't do what they say they were going to. A computer is the reverse of people- very predictable, "logical", dependable- if you give them a clear set of instructions, computers faithfully carry them out, dozens, hundreds, or millions of times, with no complaints. They're "models of sanity and integrity" in an insane world.

There's the nostalgia aspect of it, too- my first experience with microcomputers was at my parents' house. In 1981, I was 27 years old, and in the Army. I came home on leave (I was a career Army Bandsman- 22 years) to visit them. My Dad had purchased a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1, and he sat me down with it and showed me a few commands. I went through the user's guide, which had various example programs in BASIC, which I typed in and ran. I found this totally engrossing and fun. When I got called to dinner, I realized I had been glued to the computer for about six hours! I was hooked! A year or so later, I got a VIC-20, and then a C-64 when the prices at Toys 'R' Us came down a bit. It's a bit funny that Toys 'R' Us was my computer store, but that's where you could find all of the 8-bit machines of that time, and a lot of their accessories (and some good programming books, too).

On the C-64, I found programming to be interesting, and so satisfying to get a program working that I had figured out from scratch- the logic of it; the translating of the algorithms to actual code. I experimented with several languages- but what I liked doing best was composing small machine language (really, assembly) routines with my HESMon cartridge. Programming in assembly was obviously the way to go- you could control the program flow exactly, and the speed of machine language ran circles around BASIC.

Our fascinating little 8-bit machines have been bypassed at supersonic speeds by the 32- and 64-bit leviathans on the "information superhighway", but these multitasking mutated muscle machines are almost beyond mere mortals' ability to comprehend everything that's going on inside them. Commodore BASIC V2, as implemented on the C64, is a large program, but it's small enough that, if you have a good memory map of the system, you can follow along the code and understand it. (Not that I do, yet, but it's possible, and I'm understanding bits and pieces of it) I've had a resurgence, in the past couple of months, of my interest in the Commodore 64, which has led me back to my love of the '80s- programming in assembly language. I don't have C-64 hardware, so I'm making do for now with the VICE emulator running on my Windows 7 laptop. It's amazing how well the VICE emulator mimics the operation of the C-64. The team that created the emulator must be a bunch of true eggheads. And I mean that in the most complimentary way!

The bottom line? I'm programming the 6502/6510, not because I'm looking to create anything useful with it- but entirely because it's fun, interesting, engaging, satisfying- and it keeps my brain working.

Regards to all in the group!
--Doug

I just quote this for truth. What you said is so true. I like to understand everything from ground up. Also the higher frequencies and more complex buses makes it impossible for us to make hardware extensions for the computer ourselves.

Thanks to those who pointed out the social aspect of this site: it could be very lonely being a 6502 obsessive but here we find people who share our interest, and keep us interested with ideas and puzzles. It's a good community!

For me too, computers have been interesting all my life because they are autonomous and automatic, but understandable and in our control. From programmable calculators up, it's possible to have an idea or a problem, and get the machine to do the work of finding a solution.

(For a full-on dive into the zx spectrum, for nostalgia or because it's a neat solution to making a cheap computer with colour graphics, see Chris Smith's book: sampler at http://www.zxdesign.info/book/)

Your next mission, should you choose to accept it, is to design, build and program a 65C02-powered contraption.

Seriously, I was writing 6502 machine code long before I even gave a thought to scratch-building a homebrew computer. Once I got into the hardware aspect of the hobby I suddenly had an endless number of opportunities to prevent brain atrophy. I don't know how much electronics knowledge you have, but you should give some thought to building 6502 hardware on which you can expand your programming activities. Or, if the hardware side is more than you wish to do right now, acquire a unit, such as Daryl's SBC or one of my POC units (65C816). Either way, you'll become addicted in a way you never thought was possible.

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

It might be amusing to take a straw poll on what people do indulge in - some will be purely software and others, conceivably, purely hardware. For myself, although I did solder up a kit computer in the 70s, I've never built a machine of my own design, and probably never will. I slowly realise that I find electronics more difficult and less rewarding than software. Others may well come to the opposite conclusion - my point being that we have a broad church here, and by no means should we expect everyone to cover every aspect of our 6502 world.

Wally Daniels, one of the first members here but who has not posted in years, got hold of me after one of my 6502 articles was published in Forth Dimensions magazine in the early 1990's. After that, we chatted volumes and volumes about 6502/816 by email starting when it was text only. After years of this, he told me about 6502.org which he had just found and its original forum on Delphi which Mike started at the end of the 1990's. Wally said it was a great place to come when you feel like you're the only one in the world using the 6502.

Look how far it has come! As I was going through the archives again a couple of years ago, I was impressed with how much the expertise on the forum had increased over the previous ten years. It is becoming more and more valuable to the 6502 community, due to its many very knowledgeable members and their contributions and the good network of links. The non-forum part of the website has a ton of good materials also, and then there's the 6502.org wiki, and the many related personal websites of the members too.


Both hardware and software here, although the hardware goes much longer periods of rest.

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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?

It's been more software than hardware for me as of late. POC V2 has stalled because too many things are again competing for my time.

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