17/09/22 : 6502 based homebrew computer
— John Pumford-Green 17/09/22 12:29
I started a new project last month. I'd been thinking of what to use my new DM16L for, apart from simple Decimal to Hex to Binary conversions.
In a roundabout manner I found the work of Garth Wilson and his excellent resources for 6502 hardware and assembly-language. Then I found the excellent YouTube videos of Ben Eater and I was convinced that I needed to start building and learning 6502. I've always struggled with some aspects of software - it seems too abstract and not rooted in anything hard and physical. I found I enjoyed learning about machine code, and then Assembly, as it is tied very firmly to the hardware, you need to understand what happens on each clock cycle, where the data goes, how it can be manipulated.
And a DM16L calculator is right at home with the bit-twiddling needed to write code at the machine-code/assembly level. After all, the HP16 was originally designed for Programmers back when machine-code and bit-level programming was all there was!
I got a Ben Eater 6502 kit and haven't looked back.
I plan eventually to fix a hardware design, once I've experimented on Vero-board, and perhaps design some PCBs and build it “properly”….