Plasmo, thank you, that is very encouraging. I appreciate that.

Floobydust, you have taught me a lot already! And I will look over this schematic many times. Thank you very much for that, I appreciate it.

I have news from the physical side of things (not just schematics): Lessons learned from trying to implement a LCD on a breadboard!

1) Potentiometers don't come preset with whatever you wanted them to be at (go figure). Lots of ohmmeter testing there.
2) Pull up resistors have a very particular configuration, don't vary it.
3) Apparently a capacitor will debounce a SPST somewhat. At least enough for a breadboard.
4) 16x2 LCD's are a quick way to get something exciting, with little effort.
5) Soldering tiny pins that are close together is troublesome, but a non-perfect job seemed to work today.
6) Some DIP switches and tactile buttons are trash. At least the ones I have. Literally popping off the board, into the air, if I don't hold them down at all times. Time to upgrade my basic parts!

Thank you everyone, I appreciate you.

Chad

I believe you have an unnecessary gate in front of the ROM select gate which is inverting the P=Q signal to the ROM select gate. The way you have it the IO and ROM would be enabled at $8000..$80FF and nothing would be enabled in the $8100..$FFFF address space.

It's easier for me to study the logic if you depict the 74HC00 gates instead of the package. Updated drawing below...

Good luck. Have fun.

Michael, I think you are right. I'm thinking it through now, and I do believe you are correct.

Thank you for that, I appreciate your patience with me. And yes, logic not package next time.

Chad

If I may... I'm not sure if it would be an advantage or not but adding a jumper block and pull-downs to the 74HC688 'Q' inputs would allow you to set or change the I/O page in the address space. In the example below a 74HC139 is used for the 'glue' logic, half of it being used to provide clock qualified /RD and /WR signals, the other half used to insert the I/O page into RAM or ROM space. Basically just another two chip decoder + glue logic solution for 32K RAM and 32K ROM but with jumper configurable I/O page address.

Mike, that is a great layout. And you didn't even use a 74'00?! Amazing. I will study this in depth going forward. I really appreciate it.

Chad

Chad, your approach (above) with the clock switch isn't the best. It'll work in full speed and it'll work in single step but when you switch between the two the machine will be apt to crash due to the CPU clock input momentarily floating and/or receiving mangled clock pulses.

Circuits exist to glitchlessly switch between clock sources, but they're not quite trivial. I'd suggest you omit the single step feature or choose an approach that uses the CPU RDY input (rather than manipulating the clock itself).

The manual for the Apple 1 has a single-step circuit using just a single 7474. It's somewhat obscure (to me, at least), so I redrew it in a way I find clearer. Also, with the CMOS 'HC74 in mind, I added some pullup resistors and Vcc connections which aren't strictly necessary with the TTL part.

"Single Instruction" mode allows the CPU to advance 2 or more cycles at a time, stopping when SYNC goes high (indicating the next opcode is being fetched). "Single Cycle" mode is slower and more detailed, stopping on every cycle. (Exception: During write cycles, NMOS CPU's cannot be stopped using RDY.)

-- Jeff

_________________
In 1988 my 65C02 got six new registers and 44 new full-speed instructions!
https://laughtonelectronics.com/Arcana/ ... mmary.html

Thank you Jeff! Hm, go figure. I am finding more and more that "slap a switch on it" or "just put a capacitor on it" isn't good enough. These little details completely escape me, until you mention them. So thank you.

I had seen Woz's schematic for it, but yes, yours is better for sure.

So you mentioned to maybe ditch it altogether? I see that most if not all of y'all do not use it. But then again, y'all know what's going on and have been doing it for a while. The point of me having this feature at all would be to debug somehow. If it's worth an extra chip and more complexity, I'm willing to keep it. If it's not worth it in the end, then I'm willing to ditch it.

Either way, thank you Jeff, I will remember this for sure.

Chad

"Worth it" will depend. Yes it's helpful for debug but other debug techniques can take its place.

Being able to freeze the CPU means you can very slowly (at human speed) poke around and measure logic levels one by one by using a logic probe, or even a multimeter. That's pretty powerful if you don't have an oscilloscope... but if you do then in many cases the 'scope will be preferable to single stepping. And something that's more powerful yet is a logic analyzer, but at this level it's possible to get carried away with fancy tools; they can be a distraction from using your eyes and your brain to be on the lookout for simple mistakes.

If you do include the single step, you may wanna also include some LED's on the buses, because it's a whole lot easier to just look at 8 LED's and say, "Oh - that's hex 34," or whatever, rather than doing 8 successive pokes with the logic probe. Ideally you'd have 8 LED's for the data bus and 16 for the address, but last time I did this I omitted the LED's for A8-A15. Speaking of LED's, you'd wanna include R/W and probably SYNC.

Also nice if the LED current-limiting resistors are in an array; also nice if the array is socketed so you can unplug and replace the entire array if the resistance you initially chose turns out not to be the best.

-- Jeff

_________________
In 1988 my 65C02 got six new registers and 44 new full-speed instructions!
https://laughtonelectronics.com/Arcana/ ... mmary.html

Jeff, thank you. I was thinking of doing this, but it got shot down for some reason or another. I personally think it's super helpful, but I'm new to this whole thing, so maybe I'm just weird. I do think it would be most beneficial in a single-step mode for sure.

You are right, I don't have a 'scope, I only have a little multimeter. Just buying equipment for a project is expensive unto itself! Let alone the actual project cost.

Because I'm starting from zero, there is a lot of up-front cost. I'm finding that out quickly.

Thank you again Jeff.

Chad

That was KM:


It's another good lesson I think - everyone here has a different experience and different opinions. Many of the pieces of advice you get will be based on opinion or on a judgement call. You have to navigate that as best you can. At some point you need to try some things out, you need to build something and you will need to debug what you've built. If your design is right, you just need to build it correctly. If the design is flawed, you'll have to revisit it.

Eventually, you get to the point of running code, and you'll find you need to debug the code too.

There's no substitute for being careful at every step: checking what you've done, thinking through what it means. If something is puzzling you, make notes, and make one change at a time. Start simple.

Don't be tempted to just throw ideas out here to see what the feedback is - that's not very efficient. You'll do much better if you first review your ideas and try them out.

When you're building a system and debugging it, what you're really doing is building a mental model of it, so you understand what it's doing and why. If you're finding it hard going, that might be because it's not simple enough.

(I'm not sure if I've ever single-stepped - it's possible I have, on a trainer board. What I certainly have done is written out code on paper and single-stepped it by hand. That needs very little equipment! It's a very valuable thing to do.)

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Ed and BDD, thank you both.

That is very good advice, I like the red/green lines.

I can now see that you are also right about tossing things together and then asking y'all if it looks good. In a subtle way, I started relying on y'all to solve my problems, instead of myself. It creeps on you.

Logic probe sounds like a good idea. And is cheap. That's on my list. Thank you.

And yes, eventually finish planning, and start building.

I've been learning a whole lot. Thank you all so very much. I'm working (very slowly) through a (simple) design, that I am sure I can pull off, and will keep you posted.

Chad

Yup, that was me.... not being a fan of adding LEDs and such. The basic goal (which apparently keeps changing) is/was to build something simple first. I think at one point, the thought was to build something with a single UART and get it working. I also thought it was going to be on a breadboard, so again, keeping it simple and minimal makes sense. Adding all of the extras will just make it difficult to debug, especially if one has no former experience in making something like this. So, I'll still keep my opinion as is... simple and minimal is better for a first project.

_________________
Regards, KM
https://github.com/floobydust

I completely agree. I am doing just that. And thank you for your continued support and help. I don't plan on showing y'all anything until I'm super super sure about it. No more "hey look at this". I would like to run it by y'all just before I print a board, and that's it.

Other than that, is it ok if I ask smaller questions along the way? Like here is a question floobydust: Why 3.3K pull-up resistors? Why not 4.7K? Why not 5K? Why not 1K? Yes I could do the math, but the math seems screwy at times. I was working on a little LCD breadboard project a day or two ago, and I used 1K pull-up resistors and it worked great. I've seen different values all over the internet. Some folks even use 10K, for whatever reason. The idea is straightforward enough: Put in a resistor where enough voltage gets through that it still triggers a high-logic state, but when grounded the resistor keeps enough voltage back that it stays in a low-logic state.

Just a smaller question. Most folks on the internet seem to answer: "That's just what I've always done."

Anyways, thank you again for everything, sorry that my small question might be silly. No need to reply if it's too silly.

Chad