6502.org

From the IEEE, a fairly short read ("This interview had been condensed and edited for clarity.")

• Q&A With Co-Creator of the 6502 Processor (Bill Mensch on the microprocessor that powered the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64)

Two notable notes:
- Apple had some input on the spec of the VIA
- the VIA is presently WDC's best selling chip

Here's an hour and a half, Stephen Edwards at VCF West 2021 interviewing Bill Mensch:
Bill Mensch — Genesis and Evolution of the 6502 Family

Previously:
Bill Mensch and other 6502 talks at VCF West (2020)

And a written interview from 1986:
Bill Mensch – The Brains Behind The Brains
(via this thread)

Bill Mensch is a keynote speaker at this years VCF East. I see no indication that this is a virtual keynote, so I look forward to meeting him in person at the event.

https://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage- ... dule-2021/

Thank you! T'was an interesting read, I am always fascinated by the history of these chips.
Which makes sense when you think about it, really. Virtually any 6502-based system is going to contain one or more VIAs, and (with a bit of glue logic) you can use VIAs in other 8-bit systems. Conversely, CPUs in a system could be 6502s, 65816s, one of the various microcontrollers... and they'll rarely if ever contain more than one. As for the ACIA... given the bug, why anyone buy it boggles the mind!

I might, as there are good workarounds, especially GaBuZoMeu's at viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5482&p=66433#p66433 which works regardless of clock speed and data rate. I'm more likely to use the 14-pin MAX3100 interfaced by SPI though.

While the Tx bug is somewhat irritating, If you have a VIA and the ACIA, then it's relatively easy to have the transmit code write the byte then set T1 in the VIA for the timeout which you can either poll or use to generate an interrupt. It's not perfect but providing a good workaround in a system I'm currently developing...

-Gordon

Oh yes absolutely, you can do work arounds, but unless your working under some kind of external constraints that force you to use an ACIA, I don't understand why one would choose to use it when there are other, better, non-buggy UARTs readily available. Regardless I think this is going off-topic.