
Chuck Peddle Dies at 82; His $25 Chip Helped Start the PC Age - i_am_not_elon
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/24/technology/chuck-peddle-dead.html
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rbobby
The 6502 changed my life by really hooking me on computers. Got my first
professional gig (fixing a bug in a truck driving simulator using Commodore
PET Basic) that paid in a pizza outing.

An interesting feature of the 6502 was that memory between 0 and 255 was the
fastest to access (literally twice as fast). Apple Basic's "GetNextToken"
routine lived somewhere below 255 just for the speed advantage (might have
been Commodore's Basic).

Another interesting feature was that the 6502 instruction set did not include
16 bit add/subtract nor any sort of multiply/divide. Add/subtract are easy
enough but efficient multiply/divide is "weird".

I once interviewed for an assembly level programming job for the Z80 cpu (they
were building a weird APL variant). The tech interviewer wanted to see me read
some 6502 assembly from just the byte code. I was flummoxed and explained I
could only do it with a disassembler. One of my earliest tech interview
failures :)

Thanks Chuck!

~~~
timbit42
If by "Apple Basic" you mean Applesoft BASIC, it and Commodore BASIC were both
based on Microsoft's 6502 BASIC so they would both likely have the same
routine.

~~~
rbobby
> Applesoft BASIC

Lol. A purist among us sinners :)

But yes, Applesoft BASIC. I never saw an Apple ] (heheheh) only an Apple ][.

~~~
joezydeco
Purists wrote in Woz’s Integer BASIC! Microsoft’s version came on a cassette
in the early Apple ][ days.

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bane
Fun fact, you can still buy _new_ 6502 hardware from William Mensch's company.
The elegance and simplicity of the core makes it virtually embedded computing
"dust" in almost everything we use.

[http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/](http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/)

~~~
LIV2
For those who want to build a new system around the 65C02 there's plenty of
information to get you started here:
[http://wilsonminesco.com/6502primer/potpourri.html](http://wilsonminesco.com/6502primer/potpourri.html)

A bunch of people are still building new systems with modern twists, fixing
old ones and writing software. forum.6502.org has been an invaluable resource
for me building my own machine

~~~
tpmx
Thank you so much for this! This guy's site is a goldmine.

Going up one level on that site:

[http://wilsonminesco.com/6502primer/](http://wilsonminesco.com/6502primer/)

I've been fiddling with a 65C02 over the past month. This is exactly the kind
of information resource I've been looking for!

~~~
LIV2
Doh! That's a better link :)

It's certainly rewarding and interesting to design the hardware and then write
the software in Assembly, and helps understand how simple operating systems
work.

~~~
tpmx
I submitted this link as a post just now:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21892123](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21892123)

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emcrazyone
If anyone is interested in the 6502 and its history, this YouTuber does a
fantastic job covering the history. Some of his videos include past employees
of MOS & Commodore employees.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP9y_7it3ZM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP9y_7it3ZM)

~~~
unwind
Just to save subscribers the click; yes it's a link to The 8-Bit Guy.

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retrac
I don't wish to detract from Chuck Peddle's work, because the 6502 really is
an amazingly efficient and elegant design. But I've always felt the
microprocessor has been overstated in its importance in the computer
revolution.

Throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, memory was usually considerably more
expensive than the CPU, for all kinds of computer system. The majority cost in
mainframes, minis and embedded machines alike was the core memory. Early
semiconductor RAM was even more expensive than core!

It was possible to design a simple CPU in the early 70s using a few dozen
SSI/MSI chips, and a board with such a CPU could have been done in less than
30x30 cm. Indeed, that's basically a description of the numerous low-end MSI-
based minicomputers of the 70s. The cost of such a design would have been in
the same ballpark as many of the early single-chip microprocessors released in
'74 and '75 before the 6502.

But what use would such a processor be, whether discrete or a single-chip
microprocessor, without memory? A mere 4 kilobytes of DRAM in 1973 would have
cost over $1000, and a useful general-purpose computer really needs more like
8 or 16 KB to host an assembler and disk-operating system.

By late 1978, the cost of 4 KB of semiconductor DRAM fell to $60. By 1983 a
mere $2. In many ways, that was the true revolutionary technology. Even if no
one had thought of microprocessors, and even if advances in CPU speeds had
petered out, a minicomputer with 2 MB of RAM is an entirely different kind of
beast from one with only 4 or 8 kilobytes.

~~~
jacquesm
The 6502 was an enabler if there ever was one. Yes, memory was expensive. But
we used only a very small fraction of what we think of as normal today. A
typical system would have 2K ram; maybe 4K and if you were rich you'd splurge
for the 16K upgrade (but what would you do with so much memory?).

In comparision, the 6800 sold for a large multiple of the 6502, and Motorola
wouldn't have slashed their prices if not for the 6502. Peddle & Co showed
that a CPU did not _have_ to be expensive and that was a game changer.

A whole generation of 8 bit machines depended on it: VIC-20, CBM 64, Atari,
Acorn Atom, BBC Micro, Apple I, Apple II.

None of those would have happened without an affordable CPU to power them.

Very few chips can claim such a distinguished legacy, and without showing the
market potential for this 'personal computer' thing IBM might not have entered
the game at all. Visicalc (which required 32K!) was the breakthrough moment.

~~~
agumonkey
It's not hard to see the effect on ram price when you have all these tiny
personal computers broadening the market. Synergy I say.

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zxcvgm
The Amp Hour podcast had Chuck Peddle as a guest a few years back. Definitely
worth listening to. [https://theamphour.com/241-an-interview-with-chuck-
peddle-ch...](https://theamphour.com/241-an-interview-with-chuck-peddle-
charismatic-chipmaking-coryphaeus/)

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cadence-
Here is an amazing video on how to build a computer based on 6502 on a
breadboard, and program it in binary to get a Hello World equivalent. I highly
recommend it:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LnzuMJLZRdU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LnzuMJLZRdU)

------
known
[https://www.team6502.org/](https://www.team6502.org/)

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dang
Also discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21847718](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21847718).
I feel like it's fine to have two.

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dekhn
The 6502 in my Apple IIe was a great learning experience until I fried it
trying to generate an NMI. Had to spend $$$ to replace/fix it to the 65c02. I
really liked that there were some many useful technical resoures.

Things that bothered me then that still bother me now: the Apple's horrible hi
res graphics memory mapping/color implementation, which made it really hard
for an inexperienced developer to do high speed line graphics.

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pravda
>Virtually all of the early, successful, mass-market personal computers were
built around the 6502

Except for the TRS-80! And that's a big except. :-)

Now that I think about it, the only mass-market PCs using the 6502 that I can
think of were the Apple and the Commodore.

And I suspect the TRS-80 outsold both of them together.

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SilasX
FYI, I think that $25 6502 chip they refer to was released in 1975, and
according to this site[1], $25 then would be ~$120 today.

[1]
[https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

~~~
newnewpdro
And $25 was an order of magnitude cheaper than the available alternatives.

~~~
protomyth
The 6800 was a $300 chip for comparison.

[edit]the original Apple I was $666.66, which tells you how much the 6502 made
it possible.[/edit]

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russellbeattie
I think HN definitely needs an obituaries section. I'm really not kidding.

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sys_64738
Probably the greatest chip designer of all time.

