6502.org

Hello everyone!

I have been looking for current 6502 kits on the internet, and am coming up mostly disappointed. Here is my current list with links:

Ben Eater's 6502 Kit
https://eater.net/

PE6502
http://www.putnamelectronics.com/products.html

SmartyKit
https://smartykit.io/

PAL-1
https://www.tindie.com/products/tkoak/p ... puter-kit/

Vicky Twenty
https://www.tindie.com/products/bobsbit ... b-replica/

I'm seeing some others on tindie.com, but mostly things I haven't heard about ever.

I'm looking for kits that you can currently buy and build. Something like "Buy Your Own Chips" is acceptable too. Replicas of older computers (as with the Vicky Twenty) is not exactly what I was looking for but a link would still be helpful. Including kits that were recently being sold but within the past few years have been discontinued is fine. If YOU make or made a kit, now is the time for self promotion!

Know of any others? Got a link?

Thanks!

Chad

I don't unfortunately.

The PE6502 is what sent me off on my current Imma-build-a-computer* bender. Sadly I don't think Putnam is producing them anymore - probably worth an email if you're interested though.

* Followed closely by the Commander X16. I only recently (like this year) remembered the PE6502 and that it was a part of what inspired me initially

There's the Dodo:
Website
Kit Purchase

I bought one of these way back and built it, still have it as a matter of fact. Comes with everything you need and the online compiler and simulator make it very easy to program for. The only things it doesn't come with are batteries and a USB-to-Serial adapter.

A while ago I built up 7 CRC65 (6 in today's pic, one got destroyed in an experiment) to make sure the design worked and had plan to sell them, but I got cold feet. Selling is hard work for this backroom engineer, I rather be designing and building than selling. I did promise my wife I'll make this hobby revenue neutral so I do occasionally put boards on eBay for bid starting from 99 cents. I'm currently break even. Interestingly I'd get high bid on eBay, 2-3 times what I think is a reasonable price. An assembled CRC65 complete with USB-serial adapter and CF disk is reasonably a $35 item, but put it on eBay bid starting from 99 cents, a different dynamic took over and I would not be surprised to see $80 final bid.

Retro computing has interesting marketing dynamic, e.g. Ben Eater is getting great money for his basic kit and look at RC2014 product line on Tindie! I'm too lazy to investigate it, however. I do think people more interested in marketing should investigate and report back.

One aspect to consider, selling is a great way to get the support of the Chief Financial Officer (wife), so you can do more retro-playing, so that's worth making the effort. My own CFO is 100% on board, so I'm all good.
Bill
Edit:
Here are links to my 6502 SBC projects. These designs, hardware and software, are all open source.
CRC65, SBC for W65C02 and W65C816
Prog65, ROM-less 6502-based EPROM programmer that also serves as a simple 6502 single board computer.
ZG6502, zero-glue-logic 6502 single board computer consists of RAM, EPROM, 6502 and 6551.
CPLD6502 Trainer, a CPLD educational board with 6502 or Z80 as the processor.

There is, of course, the RC6502. (What Blue April is made of.) I don't think Tor is selling kits, but there are some eBay vendors who sell the SBC version with ICs, or preassembled. There's also Replica-1 from Briel. Unfortunately a lot of the interesting kits either seem to have become unavailable, or are *really* expensive. The MiniPET is *300£.* I would kind of like to build one of Daryl Rictor's "SBC-2" machines, but those seem to also be unavailable, and the PCB files Daryl makes available aren't recognized by PCBWay.

Hmm... I'm currently writing software for a single board (expandable with some future plans) six chip processor card heavily influenced by Grant Searle's minimal design. It has a 65C02, 32k ram, 32k eeprom (bottom half only used, mapped to $c000) and a 68B50 for serial comms to an FTDI-six-connector cable which also provides five volts. Grant's version of MS Basic works out of the box, but I'm writing a monitor at the moment to use some of the spare eeprom space. (The eeprom isn't programmable in circuit).

Which means of course that the first thing I had to design was an eeprom programmer - which is basically an STM32 Nucleo board, 32k ram and the eeprom to program... the software for that is very very unfinished but is vaguely usable.

I've been trying to talk to Grant to see if he's happy for me to publish, but no answer in a month...

The PCB design is in Kicad with parameters that JLCPCB is happy to handle.

Neil

My GameTank console is intended to be a kit. Currently it's in the "buy your own chips" form with zipped gerbers on GitHub. I also still have a few spare prototype PCBs I'm happy to mail out to interested builders.

Besides the main computer itself there's also PCBs/designs for gamepads, three different types of cartridge, and an Arduino Mega shield for flashing the cartridges.

There's also GlitchWorks' Rockwell 6501Q kit. I haven't built one but it looks like a good system and is well documented. The R6501Q is a microcontroller with a 6502 core and a whole pile of I/O built in.

https://www.tindie.com/products/glitchw ... -computer/

I get the feeling that the people on 6502.org are not really the target market for kits, for most of us the point of what we are doing is to learn by creating our own designs. There probably is a whole other group of people out there that would like to build a 6502 computer and would like the guidance of a good kit.

Well, the search for a 6502 type kit could be endless, sad to say but true. Consider how many products have been designed around the 6502 since the release of the chip.

Not to throw cold water on the initial post, but taking a closer look at the links (and others also noted similar concerns):

- Ben Eater's offering has been beaten to death here... so no need to start again on it
- The PE6502 - nice overall setup, but are they still making it?
- Smarty Kit - kind of pricey, as it's a very fancy breadboard offering (and a PCB version. Once you build it, then what?
- PAL-1 - Another take on a KIM type clone, which requires the 6532 chip, not easily available and low clock speeds are it. Also not currently available.
- Vicky Twenty - sorry, this is not a kit. This is replacement PCB for the ending cost reduced Commodore Vic-20. You need the Vic-20 ROMs and the 6560/6561 Video chip to make it work... plus the Vic-20 keyboard. Buy a working Vic-20, done.
- The Dodo... I remember when that was being done... nice bit of kit overall.

The problem with most of these kits, is they basically attempt to recreate an early retro machine, hence they have most, if not all, of the same limitations from the early days. If they're using vintage parts as well, they suffer from poor availability and very low clock speeds as well... and very small memory footprints. Not that there's anything wrong with the approach, but is that really advantageous based on what can be done with the current WDC W65C02S and other current parts??

I think the majority of folks that arrive here are in the process of trying to design and build a 6502 based system.... many know what their goal is, others no clue and fishing for a starting point. Others think they know what they want, but armed with little to no knowledge are trying to create a monster system by cut & paste from multiple disparate designs, which obviously doesn't work.

I think the biggest problem with attempting to come up with a simple (6502) kit gets down to, what can it do out of the box (so to speak), what else can someone do with it, and/or can it be easily expanded to add more hardware to make it more useful... understanding that, what might be useful to one end-user could be completely meaningless to another end-user. This becomes more of the issue that prevents a common entry level system that most might find enjoyable and possibly learn enough to make it worthwhile and then want to do more... which leans into becoming a hobby.

The basic advice I would give to a newbie is simple...
- First, it's not going to be as simple or as cheap as you think.
- Second, be prepared to get some test equipment, assembly tools and a programmer at a minimum.
- Third, if you don't know what you want initially, look at what others have created for ideas.
- Fourth, if you want to have a working project on the first try, use a proven design and build it (or possibly buy one from the person who designed it if possible).

Just getting started, learning to solder (if you don't already know how), acquiring some tools and test equipment and gaining some basic knowledge and skills will take time. Having a working system to start with will allow you to do some programming and get more involved with the overall process. Then you can possibly add more hardware and write the software to make it work, or branch out and design and build something of your own, once you understand more about a working system and why it works.

Again, just my $0.02, which, with current inflation, seems more like $0.002

BDD, I'm intrigued! What happened to have your post deleted???
Completely agree with you Garth. 100%. I have trained myself to have my own "small victories" especially when programming. I know the end is not near, but I can take satisfaction that some little subroutine is doing what I was wanting it to.
I don't mind cold water. Kevin, your critical analysis of my own situation and progress has been helpful to me on my journey.

On the whole, I wasn't looking for discussion about how cool or uncool these kits are, but just a list. I don't know of another place to search, and I found nothing on DuckDuckGo and even here on the forum (though again my search skills are quite wanting). I don't mind the discussion though, what you have brought is gold.
Completely agree. I refuse to use vintage parts because of poor availability. My favorite ROM chips are out of stock on Mouser (yet on order) and I'm already contemplating alternatives!
That is just wanted I wanted to hear. I wasn't intending on getting this info, but I am very happy you posted this.
Yep. But we know about them, and that's why I asked.
Yes, that counts in my book.
I didn't know you were at that point Clyde, it probably slipped my mind, good to know!
That's awesome to see. My inspiration was seeing Ben Eater's kit, and thinking "Wow, surely I can do better than that." Likewise also the X16, but I wanted to follow Dave's original goals (from his first "Dream Computer" video) as closely as possible. There was no news at all on the X16 for like a year, so I was trying to fill a gap [ in my heart? ].

So while all of this was going on, I went browsing Tindie.com a bit. I am finding a LOT of... stuff. A lot of RC2014 stuff. Not so many SBC's really. I'm actually kind of disappointed from what I'm seeing, but maybe that's just me. Are there other places like Tindie where I could find kits like what we are talking about? Bill (plasmo) mentioned eBay of course, but that's so broad and I've always had a sketchy feeling about eBay products.

Thanks everyone!

Chad

Thanks Garth,

I've got quite a few of the various tiny embedded boards. Among them were some Arduinos, which I gave away... they bored me with the toolset and such. Also a couple of the Zilog embedded boards, granted you can do assembly coding, but it's Z80... which certainly has it's following, but not enough resource to make them much fun.

Then there's ARM based stuff... I have several Raspberry Pi boards, a couple Jetson Nanos, a loaded Khadas VIM2, etc. Interesting and quite powerful boards overall, but they run Linux and everything is high level language and complex libraries... as much I think they're pretty cool (and really cheap overall), I get bored with them quickly.... as I really don't like or enjoy working with high-level languages. I agree on most kids these days... it has to be quick, easy and instantly gratifying, or they don't want to put in the time.

I still enjoy the 65C02 assembly language and like the overall simplicity of the hardware as well, hence my presence here, it's one of several hobbies. I've shared all of my hardware designs and software to make them go... so anyone who is interested in starting a simple project can just acquire the parts, build it, program and EEPROM and be up and running in an evening (C02 Pocket SBC is all pin in hole construction). The C02 Pocket is tiny and made to be expanded as well, so anyone can built an I/O adapter for it and get serial/parallel/timer boards, ADC/DAC, etc., as well as my RTC/Compact Flash adapter running DOS/65. Of course, this is the path I've taken.... which as of yet, does not include an actual console (keyboard/display) but uses a UART for a console via a terminal program on any modern PC with a USB port.

Again, for anyone just getting started, it's much more difficult to design and build a piece of hardware from scratch, and then attempt to write software to make it go... as debugging alone could put off a newbie without enough skills (and test equipment) to pull it off. If you have a known working hardware design/build or a known properly functioning piece of code that supports a specific hardware configuration, then a newbie stands a better chance of getting success more quickly. It's easier to continue when you have an early success, versus throw in the towel after too many hours/days of disappointment from a failed first attempt.

Still, the original post about a kit is still somewhat elusive... as Chad has mentioned in his last post, finding stuff isn't that easy. Then again, the systems many of us have built and shared may or may not intrigue a newbie/beginner to dive in either. From a personal view point, I'd rather see someone start with a working design using a proper PCB than get frustrated with breadboards. I think it would be easier to learn some assembly language first and get to test it out, then go down the path of hardware design and build.