6502.org

As many of you are likely on the WDC mailing list, I just got an email this morning that WDC will be having 20% off in the month of December for their SBCs and the newly reproduced 65816 Programming manual (hardcopy), both being sold via Amazon. With 20% off the SBC, I'm thinking it would a good time to pick one of these up

http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=7b2 ... a1d453c550

So.. the question is, the '265SXB or the '134SXB? Or none? Advice, anyone?

-Tor

Good question. The microcontroller based boards (134/265) have a fair amount of I/O already built-in, i.e., ports, timers, RTC, UART plus a small monitor in ROM. They should function out of the box and allow you to do something quickly. The other two boards are based on the rest of their existing chips, CPUs, VIA, PIA, ACIA with external logic, RAM/ROM. There's at least one issue with those boards, which is the W65C51 chips are defective on transmit. The boards also lack a proper RS-232 interface so you just can't attach them to a standard terminal and have fun.

I guess the determining factor is coding... 8-bit or 16-bit? If you plan to work with 16-bit coding, then the 265 board or 65C816 board are the ones to look at.

Well, I'm bad today.... I ordered a couple SXBs.. 65C02 and 65C816. Should be in sometime next week. I'll likely look at moving some of my existing code over to the 65C02 board first and leave the 65C816 board in the package for awhile.

Why are the raw cpu boards ('02, '816) twice as much as the micro controller boards?

I would assume that it's because they have more components on the boards. More ICs generally means more expensive.

Six ideas why:

(1) People have to make a living so they aren't doing this if they can't make a profit.
(2) Marketing
(3) What are their expenses? My boss believes you have to charge at least 5% percent to make money. What is five percent of a million dollars? $50,000 is the answer and that is what would pay one sales person for a year.
(4) They charge what the market is willing to pay.
(5) Amazon is not free to sell on. They charge money and my boss wasn't willing to sell on Amazon but maybe WDC is willing to cut you a deal if you order from directly but you have to ask them.
(6) It is old technology so they probably have to charge more to compete since it is not out of stock.

(Edited 12-19-2016)