20 Year Anniversary

[Mike Naberezny]

Happy 20 Year Anniversary!

It's been officially 20 years of 6502.org! I had originally planned to announce the anniversary a few months from now but cbmeeks unearthed compelling evidence that it is indeed time for the 20 year anniversary. Hooray!

Not only is 6502.org still operating after all that time, it is still active. The main website continues to get updated, such as new links to projects and tools, and new downloads like datasheets and documents. The forum is still very active with many users checking in every day.

I started this website because I thought it was difficult to find technical information about the 6502 and related parts online. The internet was much smaller then but even at the time I thought it was bizarre that more was not available given the popularity and huge impact of the 6502. I wanted a website to collect technical information and where 6502-based projects could be shared. I'm pleased to say that I think the original goals have been largely accomplished. Whenever I need technical documentation, it's probably in the documents archive. There are a huge number of links in the homebuilt projects list for reference or inspiration. If I ever have a 6502-related question, I know that there are likely a number of people on this forum who will be able to answer it.

• Thank you to everyone who has contributed. Over the years, countless people have emailed me links or corrections, copied or scanned documents, posted project pages, and participated in the forum. It is the sum of all your individual contributions that have made the site what it is today. I am very proud of what we have achieved together.
• Thank you to our forum helpers. Garth Wilson has been moderating the forum for most of its existence. In particular, thank you Garth for dealing with the relentless spam problems. I would also like to thank Ed Spittles, who has also been helping out with these issues as well. These are frustrating, tedious, and often thankless tasks but we could not enjoy the forum if they were not done.
• Thank you to our web hosting providers. I'd like to first thank the operators of chisp.net, who provided free web hosting for the very earliest years. I'd also like to thank Ross Archer, who provided free hosting for years after we outgrew chisp.net. We outgrew that eventually too (largely due to the size of the documents archive) and I have been hosting it since. Their early support made the site possible.
• I would like to take a moment to remember two members who have passed away: Tony Gonzales (Nightmaretony) and Lee Davison (leeeeee). Both of them were very active on the forum and also made multiple contributions to the main site as well. 6502.org and our hobby in general is much richer for your contributions. You are dearly missed.

In reflecting back on the last 20 years, I realized that my interests have not changed much. I'm still interested in the 6502, writing 6502 code, and building things. I am certainly not alone. Many of the forum members have been active for years and years. There are even still active members from shortly after the forum went online. New things are happening in the 6502 world all the time that keep it interesting. There are no signs of anything slowing down, so I hope that 6502.org will continue for many years to come.

[drogon]

As a relative newcomer to the site (but no the 6502), I've found this to be a real goldmine of information. Lets hope the next 20 years is just as good!

Thanks,

-Gordon

[sjgray]

I tip my hat to you Mike. It's a great accomplishment and I'm grateful for such an amazing resource for people. Thanks for hosting my pages and for being a good friend!

Steve

[BigEd]

An excellent milestone Mike, and an excellent mission, and still a work-in-progress as we continue to make new projects, attract new members, and find new resources. To the next 20 years!

[GARTHWILSON]

In the 1990's when our online services were all text (not html) and were not all interconnected by the Internet, Wally Daniels and I exchanged around 1,000 pages of emails about the '02 and '816. It was like our own extremely active, 2-man forum. After years of that, he said something like, "When you feel like you're the only one left in the world using a 6502, go check out 6502.org" which he had just found.

Clearly Mike Naberezny has had a huge part in gathering 65xx enthusiasts and strengthening what once appeared to be dying. Who would have thought that the advent of the Internet and modern 64-bit multi-GHz computers with gigabytes of RAM would be instrumental in strengthening 8-bitters in terms of popularity, access to knowledge, hardware and software methods and tools, ease and affordability of getting our own PCBs made, support ICs (like programmable logic), and other support.

Checking the forum is one of the first things I do when I get up every day and one of the last things I do before going to bed, and I check it many times throughout the day. The expertise continues to pick up, and there are people there who are well versed in areas I know very little about, and it's not possible for me to become semi-expert in all of those many areas; but I still strain for more that can be done with the 65's. Mike started a great thing.

There have been other 6502 groups, but I consider this to be the hub of all things 6502. There's the Yahoo 6502ag group. Even if it weren't in a coma now, 6502.org offers users several operational advantages. There are a few facebook 6502 groups, but fb is a terrible platform for this kind of discussion, for a lot of reasons. I use those partly to steer people to 6502.org. These facebook groups revive a lot of forgotten 65xx interest in people who had happy times with the early home computers; and such groups are like new streams that become tributaries to the 6502.org river.

There are many other forums for particular 6502-based computers like NesDev for NES, AtariAge for Atari, and Lemon64 for the Commodore64, which are mostly game-oriented, and they have many links to things on the more wide-ranging 6502.org.

I think 6502.org has also encouraged many members to also start their own websites to promote the 65's. I've done that myself—not to compete of course, but to make it easier for me to post and edit things, to promote the 65's. There used to be the 6502 webring, and although I think it's still there, it apparently has little use in this day of search engines.

[bradleystach]

This is truly a great milestone, and one I am personally thankful for. This site and the members of this forum with all of their knowledge, fantastic projects, and willingness to help have been the primary inspiration for me to pursue something I never thought I could do. Design and build my own computer.

I first found 6502.org about 5 years ago and after lurking for about 4 years, I finally officially joined the forum about a year ago. When I first found this little community I knew about as much about the hardware side of a computer as the average person. Well, maybe a little more than average, but only because software development pays my bills.

Thanks to the information archived on the main site, and the community here on the forums, I now have a 6502 SBC that I can proudly say I designed and built myself and I am looking forward to building another. None of that would have been possible for me if it weren't for 6502.org.

Thanks, and looking forward to the 40th

[cbmeeks]

Mike Naberezny wrote:

Happy 20 Year Anniversary!

It's been officially 20 years of 6502.org! I had originally planned to announce the anniversary a few months from now but cbmeeks unearthed compelling evidence that it is indeed time for the 20 year anniversary. Hooray!

Glad to help. ;-D

And thank you for 20 years of a great site. A great site that Facebook and other social media sites just don't get. You can have compelling information and conversations (and make new friends) without all the crap they do.

[8BIT]

I found 6502.org way back when I was wanting to build my first 6502 SBC. I was online searching for datasheets and 6502.org was one of the top results on my yahoo search. I don't think google was a thing back then! 6502.org was using a Delphi Forum at that time. I lurked on the forum for a long time before i finally started posting. My handle was "65c02nut" before I changed it to "8bit." I found the "Hardware Mini-projects" and the "Homebuilt Projects on the Web" sections very useful in figuring out address decoding options. The "Source Code Repository" was also a helpful section to visit when I was looking for an X-modem protocol. I worked with Ross Archer and his Intel Hex routines and used Paul Guertin's CRC code. Ross and I put together a joint "Intel Hex - Xmodem transfer package that could auto-detect which protocol was being used.

Since that time, I have build several 6502 based SBC's, sold many boards at cost to others to help promote the 6502, and have made many new friends through 6502.org. While I have slowed down on my 6502 projects, mostly due to time and other priorities, I still check these pages often, help where I can, and slowly continue to learn what a great processor the 6502 is and what a great community 6502.org is.

Thank you Mike for keeping this forum online. Thank you also to the moderators who keep things running smoothly, and to all of the contributors who keep this forum active. Remember, there are many lurkers out there (like I was once) just curious about what we are doing and if we all continue to promote the sharing of ideas, resources and support, we can spark their curiosity, bring them out of the shadows, and continue to grow the 6502 community.

Be well all!

Daryl

[JimBoyd]

As a two year member, I've found the discussions and ideas most useful. I wish I knew about this forum twenty years ago!

8BIT wrote:

Thank you Mike for keeping this forum online. Thank you also to the moderators who keep things running smoothly, and to all of the contributors who keep this forum active. Remember, there are many lurkers out there (like I was once) just curious about what we are doing and if we all continue to promote the sharing of ideas, resources and support, we can spark their curiosity, bring them out of the shadows, and continue to grow the 6502 community.

I couldn't have said it better. Thank you Mike and everyone who has kept this forum going. Thanks for all the great ideas, discussions, and encouragement.

[DerTrueForce]

Thank you to Mike, for starting the forums and keeping them online, and thank you to the mods, for keeping the place nice.

[dclxvi]

Mike Naberezny wrote:

I'm pleased to say that I think the original goals have been largely accomplished.

Is there any (relatively) major technical information that isn't here yet?

I know an Undocumented NMOS 6502 Opcodes document has been suggested in the past. It might be useful to have a wishlist of missing technical information for people who are interested in the 6502, but don't know what sort of project they could work on.

[GARTHWILSON]

That's a good idea. I'll start such a topic and mark it "sticky." Thanks.

Edit: Done, except I have not marked it "sticky" so far. We'll see how it goes.

[fachat]

So many thanks to Mike for his dedication and efforts on keeping the 6502 world alive and kicking! Without him, this website and esp. this forum the 6502 world would look different!

(And many thanks for hosting my contribution to the 6502 world as sub part of this site!)

Let's keep the 6502 rolling!

[ttlworks]

To me, the modern world of PCs and microcontrollers feels like an overcrowded\overcivilized country:
Whatever you build or try, usually somebody else before you already had built or tried it, not much of a chance for shouting "first".

But here in the 6502 world, even when tinkering with technology from the 70s, there still are some white spots on the map,
unsolved mysteries, odd artifacts buried in the sand just a few meters away from your path... and you still could be something like a pioneer.

I'm very thankful for having this place, hope the fun continues for a long time,
thanks to Mike, the mods, and the community.

Cheers,
Dieter.