In the spirit of keeping the 65XX world nice, round, and spinning, I have a little proposal.

I have in my possession a number of interesting IC’s that I will never completely use up, and I have some PCB’s let over from some of my projects that I will also never completely use up and I’d like to share them with folks that might find them a pleasant distraction.

So, here is the proposal...

I will supply 6 contestants that are registered 6502.org users with 3 chips for free (except shipping). The chips are:

UMC U6507 CPU
Rockwell R6532 RIOT
AMD AM2716 EPROM

These chips will allow the contestant to create an application design which will be judged (criterion TBD) and prizes will be awarded by contestants choice from my stock of left over project PCB’s and other chips I have excesses of. I will ship the prizes on my own dime.

Before I open this up for contestants I need two things.

1) I need 2 other folk to volunteer as judges. They will also help me determine the contest criteria, the prize criteria and the entrance criteria.

2) A show of hands as to those that would be interested in being contestants.

So, anyone interested?

Update:

We have 3 entries so far. We can do 3 more.

Official Rules:

1) The concept for the contest is ... Think: You are a late 1970's / early1980's engineer and you have to build the latest thingamajig, but it has to be built down to a price to give the most bang for the buck. KISS (Keep It Simple and Smart)

2) The 6507 must be the main processor. You cannot add any other generally programmable processing devices.

3) You can add logic or a GAL as required to make your glue logic.

4) You must use the 6532.

5) Since not all people are equipped to deal with UV-erasable EPROMS, you may substitute another kind of ROM for the 2716.

6) You can add RAM or ROM as required within the 8KB limit of the 6507.

7) You can add a maximum of two (2) simple I/O devices to the CPU bus over and above the 6532 such as a UART, ADC, DAC, LCD display, HEX keypad controller, HEX display driver, data latch, input buffer, shift register, etc. If in doubt, ask.

You can hang anything you want off the 6532 as long it is under the full control of the 6507.

9) You must start a project thread on 6502.org beginning with an outline of what you intend to do and relate your progress. You are encouraged to solicit input from forum members.

10) There will be 2 milestones for completion at 6 months and 12 months. This schedule in conjunction with rule 11 will determine prize distribution. Those finished within 6 months will have first choice. Those taking between 6 and 12 months will get the next choice. Those taking longer than 12 months will be deemed to have not completed, however as long as a log thread was started and contributed to regularly, will still receive a prize from what remains.

11) Ed’s BUGS self assessment (with 1 addition) will be used to determine who chooses first at each completion milestone. Ties will be resolved by who finished first. Read the self-assessment carefully so you know what is encouraged. You score yourself out of 10 on each point.

The BUGS self assessment:
- was it fun
- did you learn something
- did it work
- did you finish (maximum score 9 out of 10)
- did you keep a progress thread on this forum
- did you publish your sources (with an open source license for full marks)
- did you accept any input from collaborators or commenters (the more the merrier)
- extra points for being Educational, Surprising, Amusing or Interesting
- have you published a blog, featured on Hackaday, been discussed on other forums
- have you ideas for extensions or follow-on projects
- extra points for keeping the hardware as simple as possible

That’s just about it.

As for prizes, I will try to divide what I have more or less evenly into 6 lots. There will be a lot of stuff in each prize lot. I will pay the shipping on the prizes. Each lot will contain items from, but not limited to, the following list:

a) PICAXE MCUs
b) Various sensor and actuator modules
c) NMOS 6502s
d) Left over PCBs from some of my working projects (in the case of SBCs, with some hard to find components tested to work with them like UARTs and programmed GALs).
e) Quantities of LEDs
f) Small DC motors
g) Nokia style LCD displays
h) 4 digit 8-segment LED displays
i) Atmel MCUs
j) PICAXE educational kits
k) MCU development boards and proto-boards
l) Various chips (divers, timers, opto-isolators, Ethernet controllers, etc..)
m) Power MOSFETS
n) mini-solderless breadboards and jumper kits (possibly bigger ones too)
n) Whatever other useful stuff I can locate from my defunct store inventory.

As long as no one objects, we are now open for entries. Limit is 6 entries - first come first served. All you have to do to enter is declare it in this thread and PM me to tell me your location so I can determine shipping costs of the components and let you know.

_________________
Bill

This is a fantastic idea! We had a friendly competition on the MSP430 forum like this where forum members voted on the winner. A bunch of prizes were donated and the winners picked in the order they placed.

Would the contestants be restricted to using the three chips you listed (at least for CPU/RAM/ROM)? That might help constrain the entry projects to ones that can be finished in months rather than years...

A nice idea! To summarise the chips:
6507 is a 28pin 1MHz 6502 with no interrupt inputs - it has Reset, and Ready, and 13 address lines.
6532 offers 128 bytes of RAM, two 8 bit I/O ports, and an interval timer
2716 is a 2k byte EPROM

I'm happy to stand for election as a judge. I'd apply BigEd's Universal Generous Scoring system, aka BUGS. Each item is worth up to ten points:
- was it fun
- did you learn something
- did it work
- did you finish (maximum score 9 out of 10)
- did you keep a progress thread on this forum
- did you publish your sources (with an open source license for full marks)
- did you accept any input from collaborators or commenters (the more the merrier)
- extra points for being Educational, Surprising, Amusing or Interesting
- have you published a blog, featured on Hackaday, been discussed on other forums
- have you ideas for extensions or follow-on projects

BUGS is a self-scored system, so judging is more or less a sorting algorithm. In fact judging is optional!

Kinda awkward to use an interval timer without an interrupt input. You'd have to poll it during idle time, rather than just being able to wait for the handler to fire. But the RIOT lets you do that, so it's usable.

My Dataman S4 supports the 2716 EPROM, but I don't have a UV eraser, so I might have to substitute an alternative ROM device of equivalent size (or wired up to emulate an equivalent size), if I attempt this.

I also expect that building a complete, functional system will require at least a couple of external devices for glue logic, if only to put the ROM at the top of the address space where it needs to be, generate a correct /RST signal on power-up, and implement a reliable Phi2 clock. So the rules will need to account for that.

I would suggest the fewest rules possible. Even no rules! My ideal would be to let creativity run wild. Someone should feel free to try to make a minimal system, or a maximal system.

Of course, I might be out of sync with Bill's thinking, and it's for him to set the framework.

Yes, as the main chips. You can add logic as required to make things work. Even a GAL if you like to use such things. Minor substitutions would be amenable, like a different 2Kx8 ROM - as long as it does not give an advantage. See my response to chromatix.

_________________
Bill

The constraints are all a part of it.

I thnk that would be fine as long as it's no bigger than 2Kx8.

Yes, no problem there.

_________________
Bill

I think I've just mentioned the only rules I was thinking about. So we're definitely in sync.

_________________
Bill

This looks good to me. Your resume looks fine too - you have the job.

_________________
Bill

You could get really kooky and hook the interrupt line from the timer into the RESET line instead Reset latency is slightly slower than normal interrupt latency, but only by a couple cycles, and IIRC it doesn't wipe the register contents apart from resetting the stack pointer (and not saving the PC.) Would be of limited usefulness, but depending on the application it may not be a deal-breaker; you'd just have to have the RESET routine be able to determine from the state of memory where it should pick up. Probably not useful for a regular timer interval, but if you need to be able to do precision delays or anything like that, it could work.

That would be amusing. I think the stack pointer might be unaffected. So all you lose is the PC. A suitable state-machine design for the code should allow for restarts like that. A nice idea.

After a lot of thought on the rules, I’d like to propose one more rule to keep things within reasonable limits. I tried to think of all sorts of ways to limit the scope of the project and they all had their flaws. How about we set a cost limit for additional components, something like US$20 maximum, and of course no additional CPU allowed. That sets a reasonable limit of the size of the project without limiting creativity much.

Another option could be just to limit the ROM to the proposed 2k, that sets a very hard limit on what can be done. Or no bank switching allowed, but that one would ruin my plans .

I think that I can support the rules as currently defined with the cost limit of additional components of $20 to $25, excluding any manufacturing costs for any PCBs that maybe required, as being a reasonable restriction to the projects participating in the contest.

I'll have to check on whether I still have access to a programmer with the capability to program the 2716 EPROMs. If not, I think the project that I have in mind, without an additional processor as specified above, can make do with the processor, RIOT, and one additional logic component excluding power supplies and interface logic buffers and drivers.

Not having access to the interrupt inputs of the 6502 may be somewhat restrictive, but it certainly possible to compensate for that limitation in a number of ways, especially if logic-aided self-modifying code is not declared / defined to be out-of-bounds.

My free time is in short supply over the next few months, but the project that I have in mind would certainly be something that could be accomplished over the next 4-6 months. I think that a time limit such as 6 months may be appropriate, so I'd like to propose that as an additional limitation.

_________________
Michael A.

BTW, where can I find the datasheet for the 6507? The documents section does not appear to have one listed. I suppose, since the 6507 appears to be a metallization option of the basic NMOS 6502, the operation of the ClkIn, ClkOut, nRst and RDY signals and the address/data busses should follow that of the NMOS 6502. What I'd be most interested in is how the reset vector and the remaining address space are mapped.

_________________
Michael A.

I haven't worked with the 6507, but shouldn't the vectors be at 1Fxx instead of FFxx ?

1FFC/1FFD for reset?