I've probably been dropping by here once or twice a year for years. About the only question I do have at the moment isn't directly 6502 related so I won't feel hurt if no one has input.

What are you using for monitors? I still have a Commodore 1702 that I bought new but the little woman has commandeered it for watching satellite TV in bed, with headphones thankfully.

I've gone a little dongle crazy lately. No less then 3 composite to USB converters so I can use my laptop for everything from watching TV to a monitor for my Atari computer. I be thinking something LCD and ~10-15" screen would be good'nuff. I know of others who have gone the composite to VGA monitor dongle route too. Of course all my planning can be undone by said little woman yet again.

Right now I looking at some reconditioned LCD monitor/TVs with the right inputs [VGA, NTSC, cable] on eBay for ~$120. Absence of head phone jack has me worried.<grin>

My favorite programming platform used to be the Atari 8-bit in either assembly or Action!. To get back into programming/hardware, I have been fooling with the NES and cc65. Really odd beast that I can't warm up to but I do like the 'extra' display features. I have to admit if there was a cheap cartridge to turn it into a computer. I mean sheesh! If I read it correctly the entire upper 32k is all cartridge space. You could just about put all the Atari custom chips in that address space.

Anyway I bought one of Daryl's SBC and I hope to be doing some light programming and hardware projects.

Rick

My 6502 use is geared more toward controlling things and taking information on the workbench, as opposed to being human-I/O-intensive like consumer PCs; so my workbench computer just has a 16-character LCD which is usually enough. I do the software development on the PC so I have the hi-res monitor and keyboard and mouse there plus the programmer's text editor and file-keeping capability, and just feed text over an RS-232 line to the workbench computer, which assembles, compiles, or interprets, as approriate, on the fly. The PC doesn't need any special software to do that, as it just thinks it's printing out sections of the source code file to an RS-232 printer. I could even use my HP handheld computers as hosts (using a video monitor there too if desired), but eventually I would like to have a workbench computer completely independent of a host computer. I have a few bigger LCDs (like 40x2 and 40x4 intelligent character LCDs, not graphics LCDs) which I have hooked up and watched work too, but have not really used them. Another thing I have done, although again not really used so far, is a home-made circuit to take data from the 6522's shift register to do raster graphics on an analog oscilloscope. It's monochrome of course, and rather low resolution (about 128x100 dots, since the "dot", ie, scanning beam, is too fat to go for more), but I can make any characters, any size, any orientation, and mix them with graphics. Ultimately I'd probably go with an intelligent LCD that did not require a constant signal; ie, you tell it what to display, and it will continue to display that, without further input, until you tell it to display something different.

_________________
http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

At home I have a Philips 8233 and a Commodore 1084. But they are a bit bulky. So some years ago I bought an 8" LCD display with VGA, AV and S-video input for when on being the road.
Inspired by my display some of my friends bought a DVD-player with attached LCD-display for the car. Of course they bought one with at least an AV-input. In this way they can use it as DVD player (for their kids) but also for their Commodores when going to a meeting.

_________________

I'm using the composite video input on a standard TV for my text video display and my SBC-3. I also have a 5" LCD, made for PS2 and xbox, that works quite well also.

These are ~ $37 from here: (scroll down once page is loaded)
http://vpgames.com/p-787-zenith-flat-pa ... -xbox.aspx

You need to purchase and modify a cable however. These use a 4 conductor 1/8" phonoplug. (gnd, left audio, right audio, video). Got one cheap from ebay.

Daryl

Thanks for the input. Looks like 3 for 3 are leaning to low power LCD. I have to admit I did buy three of these things except the 4 gig model for fooling around.
http://sinosurge.com/product/Digital-Multimedia-Player-MP3-MP4-Camera-Games-Large-LCD-MP4-2806.html
Originally I thought they had AV input but no, only audio. On the down side was I gave one to my son and he promptly brick'd it so I gave him mine and bought the 3rd. I'm pretty sure he bricked the 2nd one I gave him to take the Li ion battery out so it looks like I spent an extra $100 to buy him two Li ion batteries!

It has an NES emulator built in and is one of the ways I was checking my CC65 NES code. It is such a cute device that it got me interested in the 'guts' again. Kind of wish it was better documented for hacking. I'm not sure if it uses an ARM, Sunplus, or what-have-you processor.

Rick

I put an RS232 port on all my 6502 (6800 & 1802 too for that matter) designs and just use a PC of some sort or one of my old VT terminals to access. Some have auxiliary HD44780 type displays on them for run status and messages.

_________________
Bill

My homebrew computer (ie uncased pile of random-sized circuit boards) outputs RGB & Sync signals that I feed into a portable TV for monitor use. Saves the space for a seperate monitor in my already overcluttered workshop

_________________
Shift to the left,
Shift to the right,
Mask in, Mask Out,
BYTE! BYTE! BYTE!