Hello World!

Hello World, testing 1 2 3. This is the blinking LED, all systems go.



In other words, I'm on line (again).



Hi everyone, my name's Will, I'm a high school student with an obsession for old technology, especially computers. I am perhaps 35 years behind the times in terms of being able to understand the processes that enable the extremely high tech devices that life revolves around today, and expect pretty much everyone else is the same way. It bothers me that you can't program a computer anymore. A computer has to do it for you. You can't design a computer anymore either, only supercomputers can lay out the intricacies of even the cheapest consumer workstation. It's been that way for years, and isn't about to change. That's what draws me to the simpler times in computing and innovation, when a techie worth his salt could buy some chips and build a reasonably state of the art computer at home.
But I digress.
This blog is going to chronicle my adventures in building and programming homebrew 6502 computers, and all the processes involved in doing so. It has two purposes to that end, first to have a build log for preservation and future reference, and to give other 6502 enthusiasts an account of a young person's experience with the venerable and antiquated microprocessor. I can only imagine there aren't many like me.

A short backstory.

My interest in the 6502 started with the Macintosh. I grew up playing with, fixing and interfacing old Macs that my dad (a tech support guy at the time) brought home. They used the 68k chips, which are (very) distant relatives of the 6502, but following the history of Apple back as far as I could, I ended up curious about the Apple I and II computers. I never actually bought one because of a lack of funds (an overarching theme in my story), but a couple strokes of unbelievable luck landed me with a couple free Apple IIe computers, loaded with cards, and a bare bones IIGS for $5. I was 12 or 13 at the time, and began to learn the BASIC language and a little about how the old computers worked. I grew my collection and dabbled in electronics some throughout that time, with microcontrollers and other simple circuits. I discovered the 6502.org website (pretty much the greatest site ever made) and got really interested in the low level electronics themselves. I bought a MOS 6502 cpu on eBay for $8, just to have one, and read everything I could. I bought books, crawled the web, wrote programs and filled notebooks with designs. Ultimately, however, my lack of funds and understanding kept the circuits in the binding, and nothing much happened. Three years ago my (amazing) family got me a Replica I computer for Christmas, which is a clone of the Apple I, and my interest was intensified. Around then I read the great website lateblt.tripod.com, where a small 6502 computer and excellent quick start guide were found. I hooked up a few wires and cobbled together a clock circuit to get it running, hard wired $EA to the data bus, and she took off running. It worked perfectly, and was one of the more amazing moments of my life. I had built a computer! Granted it couldn't do anything, but the 6502 was loading and executing NOP instructions at an amazing rate. I learned a bit of assembly on the replica I, but my longing to build my own real computer took a back seat to school and illness at the time (and of course the lack of money), and the project got shelved.

Just this year I pulled out the chips and breadboards again, and decided to start again from the beginning. From purchases, gifts and disassemblies of old computers I collected quite a stash of chips, almost everything I needed. A couple more bought on eBay, what the heck, now or never, finished off the list and I got to work.

In the next few posts I'll explain where I am now with this project, what the design goals are, and hopefully some interesting schematics or code snippets that might be useful.

I hope you enjoy reading the blog, please leave a comment!