Welcome Alan! Do tell us a bit about how you got started with micros and how you got locked onto the 6502...

Hello Ed

Acorn Electron was my first computer in the 80's
I think we spoke via email on stardot some years ago think you were interested in my Fpga electron anyway the electron has always been my favorite 80s computer I have I was also responsible for the original version of the Fpga atom that I handed over to dave (hoglet) at stardot

Alan

Great work on the core Alan. I think a whole lot of people got started with the Electron.

Hi,

i got directed here, so I'll introduce myself now.

I'm playing around with microcontrollers and small systems for about 10 years now and quickly stumbled across the 6502. Quite easy to understand compared to other stuff, very impressive systems and demos are all around, .... There were many reasons to choose this architecture to work with and learn.

For quite a while now I'm interested in emulating, due to lack of the hardware i wish i had.
My working systems atm are two C64.
I have more stuff around, and had many ideas, but never actually built a sbc from all the pieces.
There's for example:

A control unit for a elevator, consists of six PCBs. Five in the size of 11.5cm, x 8.6cm. One smaller, with a few buttons. The first one has an R65C02P2, date 95/11, R65C22P2, 1x16 HD44780, 8k SRAM, 8k EPROM, RS485, 3V lithium battery (dead).
The next two PCBs are two 16 Channel 24V input cards, giving 32 channels. Equipped with LEDs for each channel, opto-isolated.
The next PCBs is a 16 Channel 24V output card, with i think, 1,5A BDxxx transistors. Also LEDs for each channel, also opto-isolated.
The last one has 8 outputs like above + 1 DA channel through a ZN428E-8 and a 741. A GAL for bus-logic and neg.-voltage inverter DIP8-IC is missing.
The last one has a small button matrix PCB with 3x4 very nice green buttons.

I already diagrammed the IO cards, but not the CPU card. I figured out the pinout on the bus connector. The power supply is missing, the GAL and the inverter IC are missing. The battery is dead.

I also have a few SIDs and C64s for scrapping, so a whole bunch of chips around to play with from time to time.

At the moment I'm working on an emulator on a STM32F103, 72MHz, 48k RAM, 256k flash. My first approach of adopting some existing code gave me ~1.03MHz without graphic output.
I have a 3,2" 320x240px TFT connected and wrote some code to have a 32x32px graphics output. It is zoomed by 7 to see something on that small display.
At the moment this is takes more than emulating the 6502. It slows the whole thing down to ~440kHz.
The plan is to connect two SIDs to it as well and two Joysticks.
Maybe the display has to move away for a SAA7182 scart rgb interface. Up to now there's not much working but of showing a test-screen that i have to bitbang into that chip, no idea how to interface this properly and fast with a STM32.

//edit:
Ah, my name is missing,

Nils

Here are a few pictures.

The display shows a pattern generated by some machine code running on the emulated cpu.

The others are the hardware i mentioned one post earlier.

Hi all!

This is sort of a re-introduction, since it's been a couple of years since my last post... big changes in my life (for the good, fortunately!) have kept me away from this hobby; however, I'm slowly going back to business.

I've been lurking for a while, but I decided to (at least) say hello before 2015 ends! Due to (much needed) remodelling at home, the geeky stuff is deeply packed, thus almost inaccessible So, the hardware section is temporarily halted. However, thanks to this I'm maturing the designs... After reading the Eyes/Lichty book, I'll definitely aim for the 65816 instead of my previous, complex bankswitching ideas on a '02 -- will make my life much easier!

On the other hand, software development is going on as time permits. Still looking for a suitable emulator to try the new code, however things are "taking shape"

I'll be back about my progress in relevant topics elsewhere in this forum. Wishing you all a very happy 2016, hope to get back real soon!

_________________
---
Carlos J. Santisteban
IES Turaniana
Roquetas de Mar, Almeria (Spain)

Great to see you back. Happy New Year!

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

After a LONG time of lurking I figured it was time to register.

I started out with a ZX81. And moved through various 8 bits until moving up to a Acorn RiscPC. I didn't get a "real" PC until the late 90's when Acorn closed down.

I confess I these days mostly develop for the - don't laugh - Z80 based MTX range.

Shameless plug!
http://primrosebank.net/computers/mtx/projects/magrom/magrom.htm
http://primrosebank.net/computers/mtx/projects/cfx/cfx.htm

The current project however is a 65C02 co-processor for the MTX. A sort of mirror image of the Z80 Co-pro I have attached to my BBC Master.

Welcome! Looks like an interesting project.

Welcome aboard. What is that device in the PLCC package?

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

The PLCC part is a CY7C -131 1k dual port ram mapped into both CPU's memory maps for data transfer.

Hi all! Been lurking for a few months but now it's time to come out.

My interest in the 6502 comes from my Apple II and wanting to learn more about it's internals. I've been playing with digital electronics and microcontrollers for the last 10 years so I'm looking for the next level.

I'm starting me 6502 computer project (got my MEEPROMMER assembled last weekend!) so no doubt I'll have a few questions as it progresses.

_________________
http://unimplementedtrap.com

This is pretty late, but I guess that's okay.

The first microcomputer I ever used was a PET at the AMSE in Oak Ridge:


There were roughly a dozen machines. Some had Hangman as shown in the picture, the rest ran some space-shooter game.

The 1982 World's Fair was going on at the time, which was a huge influence on me. There were exhibits for videophones, touch screens, etc. Soon thereafter I was programming on a TRS80 after school, an later on a C64 at home. Have also done some electronics over the years, mostly audio stuff.

Today I still enjoy writing programs, and collecting vintage electronics books.

My GitHub page: https://github.com/Mortis69

Hi All, I guess I had better introduce myself as I've started posting.

I've been reading the forums for quite a while and have picked up a lot of useful information, so thanks everyone for your posts, they really do contain a huge amount of useful information, and make getting into 6502 projects quite easy really. And Garths primer too, that was a really useful reference for getting started.

When I was younger, probably 14-16 years old, I designed 6502 systems on paper, but I never had the confidence to actually build something. Back then, before the internet, it was a bit harder, but I've always regretted that I didn't just jump in and actually do it. I lived in a small city (in New Zealand) with not a lot of access to information. Byte magazine was amazing back then, and I ordered Zaks "Programming the 6502", I remember it took 3 months to arrive. I bought a few parts but never actually got anything done. So one part of this hobby now is righting that wrong, and actually finishing the job.

I've breadboarded a simple system already and it's gone remarkably well, maybe better than it should have. I've got a character LCD working and a R65C52 running at 115,200 which I'm very pleased about. The breadboard has no ROM, I'm using a CPLD (as suggested in the forum). It's worked really nicely for getting started, but the ROM size is very limited and it's taking up more of the CPLD than I'd like, so one of my plans is to move to a 29F010 as soon as I can and free up some more programmable logic. I'll also work on moving this to a PCB at some stage, but I need to make quite a few decisions first (like R65C02 or 65816).

I grew up using 6502 systems, until I got a Mac (128k, first thing I did was solder in new DRAM's to make it up to 512k). Started on a ][+, then an Apple /// and then Commodore 64 (SX-64). That's where my interest in 6502's comes from, but I also guess it's the simplicity that attracts me too. I've been researching the Apple /// a bit lately and it's a really interesting machine, there's some nice tricks in there to expand the RAM up to a possible 512k, including adding a new addressing mode that gives direct access to the entire RAM.

I've got a lot of project plans, but they are not really worth talking about until I know they will get done. Probably like a lot of people here my interest is in building things from scratch, so I've written my own assembler and hope to build on that with a high level language. I'm trying to get VGA video from my CPLD, but at the moment I'm not sure if it will fit.

BYTE and Zaks is a good start! Thanks for the intro. I imagine most of us have a lot of ideas and some plans, it's just the few which turn into projects - if any do! Do start a thread for each adventure that you embark on.