welcoming newcomers to the 6502 world

[GARTHWILSON]

There was a suggestion/request for a newbies portion of the forum, for the really basic questions.  It seems like through most of the forum's history, we haven't really needed a beginners' section; but OTOH, having one might make more people feel welcome to join.  As the level of expertise on 6502.org continues to grow, it could become more and more intimidating if it looks like we're all into Verilog, Java bytecode analysis, splay trees, blitters, task scheduling, etc..  They may feel more and more like this is no place for them.

Beginners' questions will be all in one place, meaning that they would be mixed programming, hardware, general, etc..  That might be good though.  The beginner may need it explained how certain programming aspects are affected by hardware for example, so it would cross boundaries.

If you're a beginner to the world of 6502 (and other 65-family processors), we want you to feel welcome!  There are all different levels of expertise here, and the various members' expertise don't fully overlap, meaning that even the highest experts lack some knowledge that another has—so you're not alone.  And as usual, for each question you might think is dumb, there will be others who want to know also but are too embarrassed to ask.  Note that there is a 6502 primer at http://wilsonminesco.com/6502primer/, but I realize someone will always have a question that's not answered there (I keep updating it as things come up) or it may not be the easiest to find the answer you're looking for.  It is also 80%+ hardware-oriented, and you may have software questions.

[BigEd]

Good thinking!

[James_Parsons]

All this was done cause of me I feel guilty now

[BigDumbDinosaur]

James_Parsons wrote:

All this was done cause of me I feel guilty now

No reason to feel guilty. This is something that should have been around long ago.

[GARTHWILSON]

Feel cared about, not guilty! There are definitely others too who will be glad it's here.

[calculi]

I'd like to quote a sentence I read many years ago :
(translated from French, the best I can do) "Sharing Knowledge makes it grow"

the original one was "La Connaissance s'accroît quand on la partage", by the late Jean-Claude Bellamy (Electricité de France engineer), who was a fine Windows connaisseur. May he rest in peace.

Marc

[GaBuZoMeu]

GARTHWILSON wrote:

... for each question you might think is dumb, there will be others who want to know also but are too embarrassed to ask.

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”

― Confucius

[BigDumbDinosaur]

GaBuZoMeu wrote:

GARTHWILSON wrote:

... for each question you might think is dumb, there will be others who want to know also but are too embarrassed to ask.

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”

― Confucius

The corollary to that one is "Dumb questions are much easier to handle than dumb mistakes."

[enso]

Dumb questions are less of a problem than dumb answers.

[decuser]

Ha! Just seeing the "welcoming newcomers to the 6502 world" topic made me feel welcomed. I'm pretty new to 6502 programming, but not to C, Python, or pretty much anything higher level than assembly. Back in March, a friend of mine recommended I get into the 6502 and so I started down this road. It's amazing how much information there is, but it's quite the chore to make sense of it. Now that I have the PAL, though, it's crazy how much fun it is to learn about this little microprocessor and even to think about it's impact on the world. Having been brought up in the world of the 8088/8086 and its successors, it's quite refreshing to be messing about with the 6502 - quite satisfying... and quite sane .

[skate323k137]

Hello all,

It's nice to find this forum, and thread.

I grew up on both DOS and Apple II computers, and subsequently 68k/PPC macs etc. I learned to solder when I was a teenager to break import protections on home consoles, primarily to play fighting games etc. that weren't released in the US.

Over the last 10 years or so I have done a lot of arcade repair, and a lot of arcade boards are very similar to older microcomputers. Many arcade motherboards / PCBs consist primarily of a 68k, Z80, sound / video amps, EPROMS and GALs.

I've always had a fascination with the IIe since it was the first Apple computer I got to use. A few years ago I got an IIgs, and then recently also restored a nice IIe platinum.

Eventually, after enough shopping for all the Apple II stuff on the market, I noticed ReActive Micro sells Briel Computers 'Replica 1 Plus' kits. It's a really nice Apple I clone, and so far, I have been able to get both the P-LAB SD expansion (with help of the developer) and 'Uncle Bernie's improved Cassette interface (ACI) working in the Briel replica. So functionally I am able to load programs from USB->Serial (slowest), Tape (not too bad), or SD (almost instant). I don't use a bus extender though, so I only use one card or the other (cassette interface or SD card) at a time.

While I've done a ton of stuff like BASH scripting over the years, and wrote my first programs in BASIC, I never really did anything on my own with machine code. Between working on arcade games (dumping, verifying, modifying, burning ROMS) and my own skills/experiences with computers, I was recently able to make a small 3 byte change to WozMon to enable auto-boot of the SD interface. So, I guess the 6502 is officially the first microprocessor I personally wrote/modified machine code for. I'm not a youtuber in the sense of going after subscribers and stuff but I did make a video demonstration of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUwAQ8LuqgM

Cheers,
Alex

[BigEd]

Welcome, Alex, and thanks for sharing your story, and your video.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

skate323k137 wrote:

It's nice to find this forum, and thread.

Welcome to 6502 land.

[No True Scotsman]

Hello, Garth. I finally got around that pesky block AT&T was putting on this site.

[Yuri]

James_Parsons wrote:

All this was done cause of me I feel guilty now

I don't, I'm glad I asked. Least I release The Magic Smoke. I've been known to do that a few times in my life.

Most spectacular time was when I plugged in old Cyrix 486 in the wrong way (the pins weren't keyed back then), glorious times were had by me, and another trip to the computer store. I look back and laugh now, but I was not so happy to have to buy a new CPU then.