The Western Design Center doesn’t just deal with the 6502 and its support chips. The board might be too big and cumbersome for a quadcopter, but a 3D printer controller board is entirely reasonable, and would probably work very well. When I talked to and at WDC, we speculated on what interesting hardware could be made that supports this gigantic header. This is great if you’d like to interface an SXB with some old hardware, but the potential for creating new hardware is interesting.
Every pin you would ever need – data, address, control, and some chip selects – are available on a header running the entire length of the board. This is a fairly standard layout for just about every homebrew 6502 computer, but there are a few features that make this board special. Each board also has 32kB of SRAM and a 128kB Flash chip mapped into the top 32k of memory. This is the standard compliment of chips for a 6502-based computer, and if you believe, the 6502 wasn’t that useful without these support chips.īoth the ’02 and ‘816-based single board computers from WDC feature an ACIA, a PIA, and two VIAs – the second VIA is connected to a microUSB interface designed for WDC’s Terbium IDE (TIDE). For peripherals, you’ll be looking at the 6520 PIA, a chip that provides two eight-bit ports of I/O, the 6522 VIA a more advanced I/O chip with timers and a shift register, and maybe an 6551 ACIA communications/serial chip if you’re a purist. If you’re looking to build your own 6502-based computer, you’ll need a CPU, some RAM, and an EEPROM or Flash chip. There are hundreds of very well-documented designs floating around the Internet for 65xx-based computers, but most of these designs have a lot in common. WDC sent me the W65C02SXB and the W65c816SXB, two single board computers based on the 65C02 and the 65C816, respectively. They’re great for educators adventurous enough to deviate from the Arduino, Processing, and Fritzing zeitgeist, and for anyone who wants to dip their toes into the world of 65xx development.
The folks at WDC recently contacted me to see if I would give their hardware a close look, and after providing a few boards, this hardware proved to be both excellent. Recently, WDC has been interested in the educational aspects of the 6502, with one of the VPs,, lending his time to an after-school club teaching opcodes. For more than 35 years, WDC has been the home of 6502-related designs. The cathedral of The 6502 is Western Design Center. Combine the longevity of the 6502 with the fact an entire generation of developers first cut their teeth on 6502 assembly, and you have the makings of a classic microprocessor that will, I’m sure, still be relevant in another forty years.
The history of the 6502 doesn’t end with video games for the last forty years, this CPU has found its way into industrial equipment, medical devices, and everything else that doesn’t need to be redesigned every two years. The 6502 is a classic piece of computing history. Versions of this CPU were found in everything from the Apple ][, to the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Commodore 64.