6502.org

Only 2329.50€. Why, I think I'll order two or three of them.

Just replacing the ROM with a PROM, EPROM, EEPROM, Flash, etc. would make the '134 and '265 extremely useful items.

@BigEd There could be numerous reasons for it; it could be that since they have never received a shipment yet they haven't changed its status. Also note that the chip doesn't show up in the normal listings. The only way to find it is to do an explicit part number search. I ordered some; the worst that can happen is that in 6 months I have to cancel the order.

It would make them more useful, but I don't think they'll take market share away from modern embedded controllers, which are decades ahead in development. So, it will be very hard to justify the cost of a new mask set.

Singer Elektronik only sells used stuff, and you can't tell how many of those machines they have on stock...
or for how long they keep it on stock before scrapping it when nobody would be going to buy it.

Hey, you could found a little startup and name it "Money Burners Unlimited".

If you are no longer able to solder them tiny SMD packages, bonding the chips instead might make sense.

;---

But back on topic.

Because 68332 might go out of production, another interesting 68k related microcontroller (without internal RAM\ROM)
might be the slightly over_priced 68340.

What had triggered our interest in Fido1100 was, that before this microcontroller was released Innovasic's business was about
cloning old chips with ASICs (80186 for instance), and back then they had stated that Fido1100 would be available until 2038 or such...
although they didn't tell in which IC package.

Unfortunately, the recent datasheet seems to be less detailed than the old datasheet,
and now they don't state on their homepage anymore how long the chip will be in production.
IMHO this isn't a good sign...

;---

Remembering the myriad of PIC microcontrollers with identical core, but with odd and slightly different peripherals,
what I'd like to see someday would be something like the Parallax Propeller, just with some 6502\65816 cores.

While looking a bit around in the internet, I accidentally stumbled over the 740 microcontroller family from Renesas.
Anybody familiar with this ?
Edit: looks like the 740 wasn't mentioned for the first time here in this forum:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1212&hilit=740&sid= ... 48818ad33f
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=216&p=1388&hilit=74 ... d33f#p1388

An interesting find, very like a 'C02. Two interesting things about it:

Haha, there's something familiar with that picture, for this forum..

I did run into the 740/38k maybe a couple of years ago. But I had forgotten about it.

More things there too:

• multiply and divide (at least optionally)
  ones-complement operation
  rotate by four bits

I think this little machine deserves a review of its own!

Did you see any distributors? Howard Speegle of Diva Automation had various products using Renesas 6502-based microcontrollers, but gradually had to give up with Renesas because they started insisting on larger and larger minimum orders, finally 2,000 pieces, and with long lead times.

Renesas lists as distributors companies like Arrow, Avnet, RS Components, Rutronik.
Usually, their sites and my browser don't seem to like each other...

Found this at Avnet:
https://products.avnet.com/shop/en/emea ... %22740%22&
https://products.avnet.com/shop/en/emea ... 629550402/

Edit: I just noticed there is a Wikipedia page about the 740:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renesas_Electronics_740

One of the docs I downloaded had 'EOL announced' printed in red on every page (made it harder to read). When that mark was applied to the document is a bit difficult to tell, but somewhen after 2010 (2010 is mentioned in the doc, but I have another somewhere from 2010 as well, but without the EOL stamp).

That article is nice, but is misinformed about the 6510.

Besides W65C134, W65C265 and Renesas 740 there might be other 6502 related microcontrollers.
I think we are just not aware of them because:

• For some odd reason, chip manufacturers might be hesitant to admit openly and in public that their product could be based on and instruction set architecture which originates from the time "when cars had tail fins".
• The "half-value time" of Terbium, what means the product life cycle of those devices.
• When ordering large quantities of chips, customers could have different part numbers printed on them. (Anybody remembers the SDA2087 and the 80535 ?)

;---

BTW:
While the instruction set of the STMicroelectronics STM8 microcontroller family looks pretty different from the 6502,
the register set looks a little bit familiar... somehow.

Someone evidently fixed it, as I didn't see a reference to the 6510 in the article.

Indeed so. I tend to forget that it can be done.
Thank you, whomever did that.