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The 6502 and its derivatives drove the home computer market.... yes a few z80 based machines existed, but the vast majority of the early personal computer market were 6502 based.... In fact they still manufacture an ancestor of this chip, it is used extensively to this day in various ways...
http://westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/w65c02s-chip.cfm
I used to work on an 80 era Texas Instruments system built for the military. The CPU was 48K memory all with dip chips. Special 15 bit microprocessor (I am not making this up). The normal current draw was 40 amps. It was a two man lift to carry it around.
using SMT seems like cheating...
OMG. This reminds me of folks who build clocks out of NIXIE tubes. Yeah, OK, they are kinda cool.
When you can buy an LED clock new for $7 which is what each digit of a clock in Nixie costs......never mind wiring the things together....
Or you can buy an LED clock in a thrift store for $2.
Keyboard Input Monitor aka KIM-1. A sweetheart of minimalism.
Then I stepped up to a Motorola 68000.
In other words, Woz really was a wiz.
I’m surprised they didn’t find a way to work in legos and ball bearings/water clock mechanisms there...
Sometimes I miss my Commodore 64 (which had a 6502 chip). My first computer; I was a teenager.
I learned BASIC on it, and then taught myself machine code and 6502 assembly language on it. I hand wrote machine code, until I figured out that assemblers would generate the machine code and all I had to do was type in assembling like LDA #255, DEC.
I also studied the internal ROM library, including the floating point math library and figured out how 8-bit processing was able to do multidigit floating point division.
I remember hacking the game “Elite” so that I could be invincible if I wanted.
I was stationed overseas on what was my last action. Mrs C sent me an Altair kit. Several of my comrades and I got it to work and created a pretty good code machine for that day.
It was an Intel 8080 chip set. Had to leave it with the embassy.
Back state side I built a SWTP 6800 and realized how much more superior the motorola/mosfet cpu’s were to the intel ones. I memorized the instruction set of both the 8080 and the 6800, can still program the motorola controller chips raw without a high level language.
Just saying
Caddis the Elder
I worked at Datapoint in my first job out of school. They pioneered in a lot of areas, including the first token ring LAN. They sold that technology to Novell and it became netware. Datapoint developed the first desktop computers and the CPU was built using discrete components with minimal integrated circuits. They sold that technology to Intel and it became the 8008. The 8008 was the first 8 bit microprocessor.
The good old days.
That thing gives me flashbacks to my days as a student learning electronics. Breadboard and wire-tie nightmares that 30-odd years later have only recently begun to subside.
Thanks a lot...
I loved the 6502!
Most fun I ever had coding in assembler.
I am a piker compared to Wozniak, his code for the Apple floppy disk controller is epic. He eliminated virtually all the hardware needed for the interface...saved $$$
Woz and Jobs were originally going to use a chip in the 6800 family for their first project, even stenciled in the chip number, then the 6502 came out, more capability, better price. Besides the 8-bit Apple II (all were either 6502 or 65C02), the Commodore machines (prior to the Amiga) all used it (if memory serves), and the Atari 400 and 800, probably their home game machines as well used it. Nintendo used the last-gen 65816 in products prior to the Wii (which I believe uses PPC?).
Yeah, I had one of those. Stupidly threw it in the trash years and years ago.
Where is the pictures of Bender? He has a 6502 in his head.
