New Guy - With Project!

[kc5tja]

I should point out my interest in a 65816-based PC has historically been derived from the following: silence and openness. I've not yet found a PC-platform computer that was completely silent (even fanless motherboards require power from ATX power supplies), and where those that exist come close, absolutely none are truly open. And even the lowest power PCs seem to suck power (well, except the ARM-based units; they're pretty low-power -- but then you have to worry about recompiling everything for the ARM, and that means manual dependency management, and that means spending hours downloading, cross-compiling, ... no thanks!!).

Reading the spaghetti that is the Linux source tree does not count as "openness" to me.

Openness, in my world-view, encompasses everything from the host OS to the expansion slots and all I/O connectors. I miss the days of the Commodore 64, where you can purchase a single book (namely, the Commodore 64 Programmers' Reference Guide) and have everything you need to write new software (even OSes if you were so inclined) as well as develop new expansion hardware. While the book was quite thick, note that more than half of it was dedicated to beginner's learning advanced BASIC. So, really, the entirety of the C64 could be described in as little as around 300 to 400 pages (you figure 35 pages per chip or significant ROM feature). The Commodore 128's PRG was even bigger and more involved, but it was still a single book.

This demonstrates why I contributed to 65SIB. I wanted a low pin count (as few as possible!), yet high throughput, expansion infrastructure that could be profitably implemented by anyone, for any hardware platform, at very little cost, and yet still be understood in as few pages of documentation as possible. Remember, we're not the PCI or USB SIG here; we have day-jobs, hack in Java, fix car engines, go camping with the kids, whatever. We don't have time, and certainly lack the financial resources, to develop the more advanced interfacing technologies we see today. Though the 65SIB still has more pins than I'd like, I think it's an adequate compromise considering our constraints.

[BigEd]

OT: I have an ARM-powered NAS which is running debian. I did have a little trouble finding a kernel and userspace which would install but since then it's been plain sailing: debian has a full and easy to use repository of every package I've wanted. I've compiled run6502, of course! The machine is fanless and silent apart from the disk drive.

The nice thing is, that gives me an ARM box with a native toolchain, so I could get into ARM coding someday. I maintain that ARM is a natural step up for 6502 fans (that's what it was invented as, in a sense) and it was handy a few weeks back to be able to use 'objdump' to disassemble the Archimedes 6502 emulators.

[GARTHWILSON]

BigEd, it is interesting in your linked article that Sophie Wilson, the chief architect of the ARM, says,"And an 8MHz 32016 was completely trounced in performance terms by a 4MHz 6502." I had to look up the 32016, and found that it was one of the first general-purpose 32-bit processors on the market. What a nice feather in the 6502's cap!