Educational Board for the 6502

[65c02eb]

This educational board can be useful for understanding the 6502 system and developing small projects:

https://sites.google.com/view/65c02eb/home

[BigDumbDinosaur]

65c02eb wrote:

This educational board can be useful for understanding the 6502 system and developing small projects:

https://sites.google.com/view/65c02eb/home

What I see is a site trying to sell a product. Don't be so blatant about it with that big Paypal logo.

Incidentally, a "page" in a 6502 system is 256 bytes. Page zero extends from $0000 to $00FF, page one extends from $0100 to $01FF, etc. If you are striving to be educational please be sure you are disseminating correct information.

[BigEd]

Welcome 65c02eb! Looks like it could be an interesting board. I look forward to seeing more information about it.

I think BDD is right about one thing though, that "page" is not an ideal choice of term for the 8k regions in your memory map. I don't know of a standard term, but maybe "zone" or "region" would do.

[65c02eb]

Thanks for your constructive comments. It is true that it is better to reserve the term page for a 256B memory area.
I will change that in my documentation.
I have added an example program that tests the whole system. Please, take a look at https://sites.google.com/view/65c02eb/ep1

Thanks!

[Michael]

Is there a schematic available, please?

Cheerful regards, Mike

[65c02eb]

I have added a video showing the operation of the 65c02eb board.
Please, take a look at:

https://sites.google.com/view/65c02eb/ep1

Thanks for your comments!

[handyandy]

Here is another educational board for 6502/65816:

http://www.apatco.com/products2.php

Disclaimer: I have no connection with apatco.com financial or otherwise.

Cheers!

Andy

[jim30109]

I ordered the Apatco board back in February or March with plans to build it during the Memorial Day weekend. I recently ended up getting a refund and was told they were lacking some of the parts for the kit.

It was shown as being in available when I ordered.

It looks like an interesting build and I was disappointed. There was no problem getting the refund. But I would suggest checking availability if you are thinking about ordering. If they do start shipping again I would consider ordering one.

Right now I'm doing more with FPGAs with 6502 cores (based on Grant Searle's MultiComp project) which has worked out well for me.

Thanks,
Jim

[mkl0815]

What I'm missing (beside any company or personal information about the seller) is the lack of any communication possibilities except the I/O ports. Also the software provided seems a problem. The listings are pictures, so you have to hack it into your editor instead of copy the content and prevent type mistakes.
There's no further information how to setup your software stack to write code for this board. You need an additional programmer to write your data to the EEPROM that sits in a default socket. This is not the best solution if you have to pull it out and plug it back in constantly while programming this thing.
Mario.

[BigEd]

There's a product design question there: what kinds of facilities make sense for a small educational board like this. Everything added should be assumed to increase the price.

For myself, I would prefer some serial connectivity or even USB.

If the only means of programming is the AT28C64 EEPROM then perhaps it would be useful to offer pointers to good ways to program them, whether homebrew or commercial, or maybe even to offer a minimal programming kit.

[whartung]

mkl0815 wrote:

The listings are pictures, so you have to hack it into your editor instead of copy the content and prevent type mistakes.

I'll simply state for small enough examples (for assorted definitions of small), I think typing the code in, mistakes and all, is much better for learning than cut and pasting code, or, worse, just downloading the example and "hit build".

It's always good to have fast success, but typing the stuff in makes you fixate and study on each line. You can type it in blindly, you can ponder each line with "what does this do", you can get better experience with the syntax of the code having to worry about delimiters and terminators and other things that are the nature of source code. Also may help you learn the development tool/IDE that you are using, if it's new to you.

You may even start changing it right away. That's one thing I like to do, I like to change all of the variable names and what not as I type stuff in. It helps reveal assumptions perhaps not expressed well in the code (like naming conventions, etc.). If it doesn't work, no big deal, I can always incrementally convert my hacked code towards the example until it does. Folks are much less likely to work on that when they just cut and paste code in.

[mkl0815]

whartung wrote:

mkl0815 wrote:

The listings are pictures, so you have to hack it into your editor instead of copy the content and prevent type mistakes.

I'll simply state for small enough examples (for assorted definitions of small), I think typing the code in, mistakes and all, is much better for learning than cut and pasting code, or, worse, just downloading the example and "hit build".

I would completely agree to this if the process of typing software and testing software on the machine is easy. But how long do you think an inexperienced user will do coding, assemble, program an eeprom and replace the eeprom in the machine while trying to get some simple program working? The only thing you can use for debugging is light some leds step by step to see how far your program has come.

For a board that is meant for education the are a lot of things missing. Adding a serial interface should not be a problem and would make working with the board much easier. Having a small monitor running with an assembler you could just start programming without the need of an eeprom programmer.

Last weekend I've added the mini assembler from Jeff Tranter (https://github.com/jefftranter/6502/tre ... r/asm/jmon) to my MOUSE2Go project (https://github.com/mkeller0815/MOUSE2Go) because it will be used for educational purposes by the Humboldt University of Berlin. The process of writing and testing small programs directly on the machine is much easier and more convenient.

Don't get me wrong, it's great that somebody still makes 6502 based hardware and the board looks pretty good. But for learning and playing with the 6502 there should be more tools, information and "infrastructure" around the pure board.

Mario.

[dwight]

You should really program user programs into the EEPROM on the board.
You should have a minimum monitor and the code to update the user part of the
EEPROM.
The main advantage of using the EEPROMs is that they can be updated on the board.
Requiring the user to have a separate programmer seem counter productive.
The 28C64 is especially nice as it has a built in charge pump and runs on
5V while being programmed.
Making a way to move code to and from EEPROM and RAM is a good idea.
One can have a simple lockout for the write to the EEPROM so that
the experimenter doesn't accidentally over write the monitor. The monitor
itself should also reject attempts to use it self to over write itself.
You can even have write protected areas of the RAM.
A jumper is the simplest write protect but my thinking is half of a 7474. It
would require the push of a push button to engage and be cleared by
reset and a code access to some location to clear it.
The person then has to be serious about their updates.
Dwight

[barrym95838]

mkl0815 wrote:

... Last weekend I've added the mini assembler from Jeff Tranter (https://github.com/jefftranter/6502/tre ... r/asm/jmon) to my MOUSE2Go project (https://github.com/mkeller0815/MOUSE2Go) because it will be used for educational purposes by the Humboldt University of Berlin. The process of writing and testing small programs directly on the machine is much easier and more convenient ...

Jeff has a very straightforward coding style, but his source (and resultant executable) could benefit greatly from some careful re-factoring.

Mike B.