INFOTAINMENT THE 6502

The Triumphant March

30-year old design still inspires thousand
Roelf Sluman

Are eight-bit processors something from the past or is it still possible to do some-
thing useful with them? Elektor Electronics went looking and discovered that the
good-old 6502, in a world of threaded computing and dual-core processors, still
has a following of faithful fans.

In the 1970’s and 80’s three 8-bit processors dominated elegant 8-bit processor. Many thousands of enthusiasts
the market: the 6809 from Motorola, the Z80 from Zilog across the whole world still work daily with the 6502
and the 6502 from MOS. By far the most popular of and make it do things that were not considered possible
these three was the in 1975.
6502: its low cost (when
introduced, the 6502 set
you back about 25 dol-
lars) and the advanced
Price war History
The 6502 processor cele-
design for its time made When the 6502 was introduced in 1975 it cost brates its 30th anniver-
sure that the 6502 con- about 25 dollars. That made it a serious com- sary this year. The intro-
quered the world in a petitor to the processor it was copied from, the duction was preceded by
short time as the brain in 6800, which by comparison costs a whopping a scandal: the designers
popular home-computers 179 dollars. No wonder computer manufacturers of the 6502 had, in the
such as the such as Apple and Commodore went for the first instance, developed
Commodore 64 and the 6502. Steve Wozniak from Apple had his eye in another processor: the
Apple II. the 6800, but the enormous price difference ulti- 6501. Unfortunately, it
mately forced the decision. was a virtual copy of the
We are now some 30 6800 processor from
years later and proces- Motorola. This is not a
sors that are many thousands of times faster than the surprise, because the same designers developed the
6502 now dominate the market. But… that does not Motorola 6800! Shortly after the 6800 processor
mean that there are no applications to be found for the appeared on the market, a dispute arose between
Motorola and the 6800 designers. This conflict resulted
in the resignation of most of the designers, who were
promptly hired by MOS Technology (in the 70’s
Motorola’s biggest competitor). MOS recognised the
potential for the 6800 and asked the designers to design
a processor that was pin-compatible with the 6800. That
became the 6501, which was much cheaper because the
development costs were negligible.

Naturally, Motorola weren’t going to just let that happen

and threatened to drag MOS into court. MOS responded
Figure 1. with the 6502, which was exactly identical to the 6501
The KIM-1 computer, with the only change that the pin-out was different. As a
developed by MOS consequence, the 6502 no longer fitted in boards that
Technology. Input was were designed for the 6800, which was reason enough
via a hexadecimal for Motorola not to proceed with a lawsuit.
keyboard, for the
output a 6-digit LED Because there were now no boards that would fit a
display was present. 6502, MOS had to design something to bring the 6502

34 elektor electronics - 3/2006

h of the
ds of designers
to the attention of software developers. This puter with 64 kB of
became the KIM-1 (see Figure 1), a single-board memory that could be
computer with 1 kB of RAM. switched in or out as
desired in an intelligent
Computer manufacturers quickly appreciated the enor- manner, via a method called bank switching.. (For
mous potential that the 6502 offered. With the introduc- example, in the memory area into which the I/O ports
tion of the Apple II and Atari 400 personal computers, were mapped there was also a section of RAM that could
the 6502 broke into the American market; Commodore be switched into ‘view’ so that data could be copied to it
was equally successful in Europe with the VIC-20 and and then switched ‘out of view’ so that the I/O-ports
later the Commodore 64 (with a more advanced version were accessible again.)
of the 6502, the 6510). The sales of just the Commodore
64 alone exceeds 25 million; the total number of 6502
processors sold worldwide is estimated at well over one Get cracking yourself with a 6502
hundred million! The best way to get to know the 6502 is to work with
In Elektor Electronics there were also countless projects one yourself.
using the 6502. The ‘Junior Computer’ was an exception-
ally successful learning system published in the 1980s. Simulator
From 1983 there was a series of boards that allowed The easiest way is using a simulator, a piece of software
you to build a complete 6502 computer. This finally that imitates the behaviour of a 6502. An example of an
resulted in 1985 in a system that was called Octopus 65. excellent 6502 simulator is the program 6502 Simulator
that you can download free from
http://home.pacbell.net/michal_k/6502.html (Figure 2),
The technology among others.
The 6502 is a 5-volts, 8-bit processor with a 16-bit
address bus, that with a range from 0x0000 to 0xFFFF is Emulator
able to address up to 64 kB of memory. It comprises An emulator is a computer program that creates a so-
4,300 transistors. The clock speed is 1 MHz, but called virtual machine: a computer inside a computer as
because the 6502 does not have to work through a list of it were. Because an emulator is a software replica of an
microcode instructions for each opcode that has to be authentic computer or processor, all software written for a
executed, it is in practice just as fast as a 4 MHz Z80 certain computer or processor will also run in the emula-
(which does use microcode). tor. Even possible design faults that were present in the

The instruction set consists of no more than 56 instruc-

tions and because RAM memory was much faster in
those days, the designers saved on internal registers. The
6502 has therefore only three, each eight bits wide: the
accumulator (the only register on which operations can
be performed), and the index registers X and Y. The rela-
tively large number of addressing modes of the 6502
makes it possible to address 64 kB of memory efficiently,
using two-byte instructions (opcode and one operand). In
order to fill 64 kB of memory, not more than 19 bytes of
opcodes and operands are required. (Do you know
how? Send the author an email: [email protected]!) Figure 2.
Ideal for those who
There exist a number of variations of the 6502, with want to work with a
either more or fewer features. The best known are the 6502: the 6502
6507 (which was used in the Atari VCS2600 game com- macro-assembler and
puter) and the 6510 that can be found in the Com- simulator from
modore 64. The Commodore 64 was the first home com- Michal Kowalski.

3/2006 - elektor electronics 35

INFOTAINMENT THE 6502

original hardware are present in the emulator!

Practically every computer from the 70’s and 80’s has
been emulated by now. In a large number of cases, the
software producers from the then popular computer soft-
ware have made their software freely available for use on
these emulators. If you’re ever thinking nostalgically about
your time in front of your Apple, Atari or Commodore com-
puter then you can relive those times with an emulator!

One of the better-known emulator programs is VICE (a

rather silly abbreviation for VersatIle Commodore Emula-
tor). This can be found at www.viceteam.org. VICE was
written to emulate all known Commodore home computers
(including the Commodore 64). The VICE emulator is so
Figure 3. perfect that practically every piece of software ever writ-
The old, trusty screen ten for the Commodore 64 runs flawlessly under VICE.
from the Commodore After starting VICE, the famous blue screen of the Com-
64, now as emulator on modore 64 appears (Figure 3). From now on you’re
a modern computer. dealing with a real Commodore 64. Even the keyboard

Figure 4.
One of the two PCBs
that comprise the 6502
built from discrete
parts by Dieter Müller.
(source: website
Dieter’s Hobby
Projects)

has been arranged differently and now corresponds to

the Commodore 64 keyboard. The disk drive and cas-
sette player, including any possible turboloaders are also
completely emulated.

Copying
You can also copy a 6502 using ‘discrete’ components
such as 7400-series ICs, RAMs and EPROMs. This is
what Dieter Müller did with some old bits he had at
home. He nearly succeeded, using about 40 ICs and two
PCBs (Figure 4). The most important concession is a dif-
ferent timing, but his processor knows all 6502- and
Figure 5. 65C02 opcodes (see http://people.freenet.de/
At FPGA Arcade dieter.02/m02.htm).
various 6502 hardware
for games are emulated A different approach is to start with an FPGA and to
in an FPGA. build into it the complete functionality of a 6502. An

36 elektor electronics - 3/2006

FPGA, after all, contains a large number of programma-
ble logic blocks and in a modern version the circuit for
an 6502 can be easily accommodated (or even multiple 2 kB memory?
copies in one FPGA!). There is an organisation, which
goes by the name Opencores, that is engaged in the
development of various CPU cores in FPGAs
More than enough!
(http://opencores.nnytech.net). The 6502 code can be The first computer in which the 6502 was used
found after a bit of searching, it is called T65. This is also was the world famous games computer from
available from http://www.fpgaarcade.com/, where Atari, the VCS2600. Although the 6502 was
a number of games variations of the 6502 are available already the cheapest computer in its class, Atari
as well (Figure 5). managed to reduce the price even further by
ordering a special version of the 6502, the 6507.
This processor could address a maximum of 8 kB
Applications instead of the normal 64 kB. Not a problem,
Because the 6502 is such a versatile and cheap proces- according to the designers of the Atari 2600.
sor, and because it is easy to combine with other hard- After all, memory was so expensive that no com-
ware, it is still a favourite element in many DIY projects. puter game would ever use more than 2 kB.
Many projects can be found on the Internet that use a
6502. Most of these comprise a home-built computer
with the 6502 as its nerve centre, but a number of very
inspiring applications can also be found... two, who could determine, based on the vibrations in his
shoe, on which number to bet.
The 6502 in the casino
That a 6502 can be used to make a lot of money was Give your robot eyes
discovered by the ‘Eudaemons’, a pair of American stu- Mike Naberezny used a combination of four Sharp
dents from California. They built two circuits based in the GP2D02 infrared sensors and a 6502 to give his robots
6502, which they housed in two shoes. They subse- ‘eyes’. The program does nothing more than continually
quently went to a casino and picked a roulette table. Stu- poll the four sensors (high values mean ‘close’ and low
dent number one moved his shoe in the same rhythm as values mean ‘far’) and pass this information to the robot.
the revolutions of the roulette wheel. The 6502 processor On the Internet (with as starting point www.6502.org)
in this shoe used a revolutionary algorithm to calculate many more such fantastic projects around the 6502 can
on which number the ball would come to rest. This infor- be found.
mation was then automatically sent to student number (050316-1)

Where can you find

a 6502 now?
Gunther Ewald

It is hard to believe, but microcontrollers with a

6502 core are still being produced today.
Manufacturers such as Micronas and Renesas use
this CPU core in cheap microcontrollers for simple
control tasks.
Have a look at Micronas at the WDC65C816 CPUs,
which are used mostly in automotive applications:
http://www.micronas.com/products/by_function/c
dc_1607f-e/product_information/index.html

Renesas employs the 6502 core in the entire 740

family. These are (with exception of specific exten-
sions) completely opcode-compatible with the origi-
nal. These products are not really suitable for hobby
applications. You need to use a special emulation
Unfortunately the selection has been reduced MCU and an emulator. The manufacturer does
somewhat as a result of switching to lead-free pro- make a free MCS-simulator available with a run-
duction, but the manufacturer still has 37 deriva- time of 4 months. This offers I/O-simulation, inter-
tives with a 6502-core: rupt-simulation, execution cycle measurement, RAM
www.renesas.com/fmwk.jsp?cnt=740_family_land- monitor display and coverage measurement. The
ing.jsp&fp=/products/mpumcu/740_family/ program is available from the Renesas homepage.

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