It's amusing to think that all the peripherals individually probably have more transistors than the CPU itself. Neither USB nor Ethernet controllers are particularly simple.
CS/A65: A 6502 computer with USB, Ethernet and co-processors
41–50 of 50 posts
Re: CS/A65: A 6502 computer with USB, Ethernet and co-processors
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
X16 is going to be more for folks who want something that just works and they can play around with in software Projects like this are more for folks who are looking to build their own computers from scratch. Typically, this is for someone who's more into hardware. Personally, I enjoy both. I have probably 6 or so kit computers at this point. FWIW, the two that I've enjoyed the most are Ben Eater's breadboard 6502 pro…
The goals of the X16 are actually at a crossroads right now https://www.commanderx16.com/forum/index.php?/topic/1657-cha...
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Re: CS/A65: A 6502 computer with USB, Ethernet and co-processors
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
It feels weird to me that some hackers don't know what a 6502 is! Sign of my age I guess.
Earlier this year, I wrote a 6502 emulator and discovered that none of my coworkers even know what the 6502 was. Almost every conversation resulted in me saying: "You know the NES? It used a 6502 as a CPU".
As time goes on my experience is that I get more and more intellectually and spiritually isolated, even in a globally connected society. Perhaps it's an inevitable part of continuing personal deveopment in a society changing dramatically over time.
Re: CS/A65: A 6502 computer with USB, Ethernet and co-processors
#44As a side-side note, I always found fascinating how you can have essentially a 6502 with display, 2 MB of memory (or more) and a USB port for a few bucks, as demonstrated here:
https://spritesmods.com/?art=picframe&page=1
I often wonder why the manufacturers - besides the photoframe usage - don't sell an "open" version with some toolkit to let people have fun with these devices.
Re: CS/A65: A 6502 computer with USB, Ethernet and co-processors
#45Always love to see a 6502 post here on HN. It's a really unique processor compared to other 8-bit processors at the time. With only one general purpose register, and memory mapped IO, the 6502 offers a ton of "addressing modes" to solve problems that the 8080 would solve with register transfers. Ben Eater ( http://beneater.net/ ) makes a neat video series and accompanying product kit where you build a 6502 on a bread…
A while back I tried writing an Atari 2600 game and got about half way (got sprites, collisions, level, just no goal) The console uses a slightly cheaper version, the 6507 I think. Same chip, just smaller address line and no interrupts (!) Instead you ran a "wait for the cathode ray to reach the right side of the screen" in order to time everything correctly. Very fascinating stuff, I recommend anyone interested in t…
There’s also no way to set the horizontal position of sprites other than waiting for the scan line to reach the position you want and yelling “NOW!!!”
Re: CS/A65: A 6502 computer with USB, Ethernet and co-processors
#46As a side-side note, I always found fascinating how you can have essentially a 6502 with display, 2 MB of memory (or more) and a USB port for a few bucks, as demonstrated here: https://spritesmods.com/?art=picframe&page=1 I often wonder why the manufacturers - besides the photoframe usage - don't sell an "open" version with some toolkit to let people have fun with these devices.
Western Design Center (who still manufactures 65C02S’s) has a series of development boards based on the 6502: https://www.tindie.com/stores/wdc/
Of course, they’re way more expensive than an Arduino Mega, which is approximately as powerful…
Re: CS/A65: A 6502 computer with USB, Ethernet and co-processors
#47Re: CS/A65: A 6502 computer with USB, Ethernet and co-processors
#48Re: CS/A65: A 6502 computer with USB, Ethernet and co-processors
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
X16 is going to be more for folks who want something that just works and they can play around with in software Projects like this are more for folks who are looking to build their own computers from scratch. Typically, this is for someone who's more into hardware. Personally, I enjoy both. I have probably 6 or so kit computers at this point. FWIW, the two that I've enjoyed the most are Ben Eater's breadboard 6502 pro…
The goals of the X16 are actually at a crossroads right now https://www.commanderx16.com/forum/index.php?/topic/1657-cha...
I’m glad to see this. I would prefer a kit as well. I feel like a lot of the challenge at this point is going to be supply chain and production given the current environment with silicon. Just give me the board, any critical components, and a bom. I’ll figure out the rest.
Re: CS/A65: A 6502 computer with USB, Ethernet and co-processors
#50Some folks may be also interested in his latest endeavor. https://github.com/fachat/MicroPET It's quite clever. At it's core, it's PET clone. But deeper, it's not just a PET clone, but 4 other machines in the PET series. On top of that it's based on a 65816, has B&W 640x480 VGA graphics, as well as several different text modes. As a cherry on top, it can run 4 "virtual" PETs simultaneously. This is much closer to a m…
Thats really cool.
I feel that modern computers are so powerful that they are productivity sappers. For me to be productive, I think a system with low latency but otherwise very limited would be the best.
It's like what a friend said in college about getting a dual monitor setup: "Your productivity doubles until you realize you can watch movies on the other one"