Everything Old Is New Again: Another 6502 Board Is Born

[Jeff] says that designing your own 6502 computer is a rite of passage, and he wanted the experience. His board can accept a real 6502 or the newer CMOS variant that is still available. There are a few modern conveniences such as USB power and provisions for using a USB serial port.

We are spoiled today with microcontrollers having everything in one package, but with this class of CPU you need your own memory, I/O devices, and other support chips. [Jeff] took a traditional approach, but picked components that are still easy to obtain. Some designs now push all the support functions to a more modern processor like an Arduino, which is very simple to do, but doesn’t feel as authentic, somehow.

For software, there are several versions of BASIC, one based on Ohio Scientific’s variant. There’s also a monitor image. With 32K of RAM, this would have been a respectable machine in its day. The BASIC interpreter dates from 1977. There are plenty of old BASIC games from those days and [Jeff] shows a famous version of poker running on the board. The 6502’s assembly language isn’t that bad, either.

We love these old retro builds. If you don’t fancy all the support chips you can, as we mentioned, use another processor. Or, try an FPGA.