Digikey, arrow, and mouser for electronic components.

Unfortunately, most of the brand-named programmers are $200+. I have found that ebay offers the best bang for the buck, as long as you research the parts to be sure they are supported. Unfortunately, my programmer is not currently on ebay (Genius NSP Serial port version).

As this is purely hobby, I have been reluctant to invest in the higher dollar commercial products. I instead have sought the contributions of other hobbyists and those vendors who offer free development tools with their products. Xilinx has the ISE Webpack (free) for their CPLD and FPGA's. Atmel has a CUPL compiler for the GAL's (free). There are many free assemblers for the 65C02. And Atmel has an integrated assembler and simulator for their AVR's (free).

Again, I went to ebay to find very cheap programming adapters for the Xilinx and AVR parts. These are not high quality with all the bells and whistles, but they do allow for the basics. I could not have developed the SBC-3 without tools such as these.

Daryl

I started with the ADC0820 also, but from National. I switched to the MAX153 which is virtually the same thing, pinout-compatible, but twice as fast.


My workbench computer runs ok until it gets a little over 7MHz, with 4MHz parts and 70ns EPROM and 55ns RAM, so I run it at 5MHz for some headroom. That's with my address-decoding scheme which has no more than two gates' delay for anything selected.


I've thought about different ways to do this, for more reasons than just speed, but never actually gotten down to business and done it. One idea I've had is to use a microcontroller to load the RAM before letting the processor loose. It would be nice to not be stuck with non-movable memory-map divisions between ROM and RAM, and it would also be nice to be able to write to your NMI and IRQ vectors.


You'll just have to hit the timing diagrams and charts and start adding up things like address set-up time, access times, and data set-up and hold times, and see how much it leaves for glue logic at the clock rate of interest.

Its certainly true that the 12- and 14-bit architecture devices have some annoying quirks but the 18F devices are much better.

I reckon a single 18F4620 ($5.21 ea.) could do everything - this is the kind of job they excel at - its contains the equivalent of at least one VIA (depends how you use the ports), an ACIA, an A/D converter, 64K Flash ROM and 3.5K RAM and can do 8-9 MIPS on a 10Mhz crystal with the PLL enabled. The development IDE is free, as is the student version of the C compiler. A PICKit 2 programmer/real-time debugger is $49.99 with a demo card to practice on and integrates with the IDE.

The most expensive item in the whole project will be the display. A 320x240 GLCD module is going to set you back ~$100.

_________________
Andrew Jacobs
6502 & PIC Stuff - http://www.obelisk.me.uk/
Cross-Platform 6502/65C02/65816 Macro Assembler - http://www.obelisk.me.uk/dev65/
Open Source Projects - https://github.com/andrew-jacobs

The price is up to about $72, but here is the newer verison (USB) of my programmer:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0276553584

A better device list and programming software can be found in this auction (same device):

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0302029423

They do come from Asia, and the support is not very good, but for the price, you cannot do much better. This one even programs some of the AVR's directly!

Daryl

Can I use your 65c02 windows simulator to write code for that EEPROM burner for an OS? If you have done that successfully, I'm gonna bid on that tonight!

The 65C02 simulator can be used to verify your code, for the most part. The I/O support will not be exactly the same as your final system. You will also need an assembler to convert your source code to binary. I used the TASS assembler to write the SBC-2 and SBC-3 System Monitors and used my Genius Programmer to write all of the EEPROMs.

As an alternative, try Michal Kowalski's IDE, found here:
http://home.pacbell.net/michal_k/6502.html

It has a simulator and built-in Assembler and can generate the binaries as well.

Yes, the programmer's software can load and write any binary file to an E(E)PROM.

Daryl

That assembler is actually written for the 6502 right? Not the PC?



I like his work, I'm going to try that out... Time to order the burner.... And my Cooper Weller electric wire wrap gun is being shipped as of Tue. I got it for $10 from ebay. I'm sorta worried I won't be able to get bits/sleeves for it, we'll see if some other manufacturers bit/sleeves will be compatible. (The cooper/weller site won't let me order OEM parts). Hopefully it will be here by this weekend.

BTW, I am going to try to update my purpose intro if it will still let me edit. My handwriting can be hard on the eyes, especially after a long day at work... Today I got some 4x4 per inch graph paper, and all future schematics will be abit more professional. Wish I could have gotten 16x16 per inch...

Also, I'm going to stick to standard memory addressing (I.E. use a 138 for 8Kx8, and 2 154's for I/O ports), forget the esoteric for now, and use the F series for the speed. And, even though that Maxim equivalent part for the 0820 is 2x the price at $6 each, a megasample/sec is worth the price. Thank you all for your input.

I agree, I've been skimming over possible displays from the mouser catalog I have. And 320x240 is exactly what I need in monochrome. The interfaces are what is slowing me down. So far I like the Electronic Assembly part # EA GE240-7KCV24 which is a 240x128 graphic display. Communication by RS232. I would like to have a digital scope option on this project, which is easy in software using a chip like the 68/6545, so I can see any 1 analog signal in 8 bits. I think this IC is obsolete, which is unfortunate. Using RS232 and this high level language board I'm not sure it would be as fast as I need it. But this part, the video, is way in the future. It'll be the crown of the project after everything else is working.

Tass runs on a PC but assembles 6502/65C02 assembly files (ASCII Text) into binary files. These binaries are read by the programmer software, running in Windows, and sends it to the target device. The end result is a programmed EPROM.

More freeware - check out ExpressPCB.com. They have a free schematic and PCB layout CAD program. It is designed to create PCB's that they manufacture for you. However, the schematic program can export to a Bitmap file. That's how I generate most of my SBC-2 and all of my SBC-3 schematics. Its not hard to learn and you can create your own parts if they do not already exist in the libraries.

Daryl

ExpressPCB seems to be expanding. Last time I was there about 6 months ago, they were offering 3 boards for $65, and didn't have that software available. Now they're down to $51 for 3 boards, and that schematic program is quite good. Much better than drawing on paper, and about 5 times faster.

Gonna check out the assemblers, in a couple days, after I catch up on schematics. Thanks alot for that info Daryl. That programmer is coming from Hong Kong, probably going to be a couple weeks eh?

Glad to help!

The last time I looked into it which was definitely more than six months ago, they did offer their own software free, but the drawback for me was that they would not accept gerber files from any other software. You could only use theirs. For our company work, I use CAD that puts out industry-standard gerber and excellon files. I rather keep using that for a few reasons. It takes a long time to not only get really proficient at a particular CAD software package, but also to learn its quirks and how to get around them (since none of the software packages are perfect), learn how to do things that aren't in the manual, etc.. My CAD also does not run under Windoze .

Of all the schematic-capture software packages I've tried, I have not liked any of them though, so I keep doing schematics by hand only. I got very proficient and fast at OrCAD at my last place of work, but hated it. It had more bugs than an ant hill (although they might not be a problem for a casual user).

I'll let you guys argue that one out... I've only used the schematic creation tools, and it is much better than graph paper (which I just bought yesterday), and logic stencils (which I was planning to buy).

Not that it maters, but I have used ExpressPCB since 2001. Somewhere between SBC2 v2.3 and v2.5, the schematic portion was born. That puts the date somewhere between 2002 and 2003.

As far as easy, full-featured, and portable go, its not the greatest. However, it is FREE to use. Somehow, that makes it a good tool in my book.

Just my opinion though, I certainly respect the opinions of others as well.

Daryl

Can you guys help me out? Do you see any problems?

EDIT: Tested