
The Story of the Team Behind the 6502 - sohkamyung
https://www.team6502.org/
======
bcaa7f3a8bbc
The website's video cover is a remake of that classic photo by EE Times that
shows the 6502 team members holding the chip layout, which is excellent.
Unfortunately, it copied the original mistake by EE Times in print [0] as
well: the image is improperly mirrored by the Y-axis, it makes all people
left-handed and the flipped the layout as well!

If you compare the 6502 layout using the dieshot by the Visual6502 team [1],
you can clearly see that the layout is flipped. Note the location of the
T-shaped and L-shaped circuits at the bottom-left and bottom-right.

[0] [https://research.swtch.com/6502](https://research.swtch.com/6502)

> An EE Times article from August 1975 shows a picture of the 6502 team, along
> with a caption listing Harry Bawcom as a “layout designer” and Bill Mensch
> as a “design engineer,” which seems to corroborate Bawcom's note. (Note that
> the photo printed in the article has been mirror-image reversed.)

[1]
[http://visual6502.org/JSSim/index.html](http://visual6502.org/JSSim/index.html)

~~~
tyingq
Here's the EE Times photo:
[http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/magazines/misc/mos_605x_team...](http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/magazines/misc/mos_605x_team_eetimes_august_1975.pdf)

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wmil
What's really interesting is how long 6502 variants lasted. They mentioned the
NES, but the SNES also used a 16 bit variant similar to what the Apple IIgs
used.

Starting in 1995 Nintendo included the SA1 chip in some cartridges, which was
a 6502 variant running at a little over 10Mhz.

I actually think that Nintendo could have come out with a SNES Pro CD system
in the mid 90s by including SA1 and SuperFX2 chips and having 4MB of RAM.

CD based systems with sprite & tile based hardware seem to have all failed due
to lack of RAM. Just too memory hungry, especially once you start increasing
the number of colours. The Neo Geo hardware (Motorola 68k & Z80) was able to
produce hits after 2000 by using giant, expensive, cartridges.

They could have kept a 6502 based system going as a budget system (keeping the
N64 as their "cadilac" system) until 2000.

~~~
spectramax
You can still buy them from WDC, part #W65C02S:
[https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Western-Design-
Center-W...](https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Western-Design-Center-
WDC/W65C02S6TPG-14?qs=sGAEpiMZZMvu0Nwh4cA1wSNu7hWmGrIdvYIw7nZ2DMI%3D)

~~~
lnsru
Price is a bit high, but factory lead time of 1 week is amazing! Also very
interesting Product Change Notification: “0.6μm process currently being used
at TSMC”. Interesting, that TSMC still used such ancient node in 2013.

~~~
joezydeco
You could shrink the die, but what package will you put it in?

~~~
vidarh
They do have some in smaller packages too, e.g. [1] that uses a PLCC-44
package, so ~16.7mm per side instead of ~5.2cm x ~1.5cm. The package above is
that big because it's pin-compatible going back to the original 1975 version,
and mostly drop-in compatible (barring some issues such as different levels of
support for undocumented opcodes).

But of course even a PLCC-44 package is big compared to that die.

[1] [https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Western-Design-Center-
WD...](https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Western-Design-Center-
WDC/W65C02S6TPLG-14?qs=%2Fha2pyFaduhETdnU600mv4QZcE2Ajtuy2KDPIWXgdSDFKMNf713TIg%3D%3D)

~~~
joezydeco
And that's kind of my point. If most 6502s are needed as legacy drop-ins, then
there's no reason to shrink the die if you're just going to weld it into a
massive DIP package.

~~~
vidarh
Yes, I agree with you; sorry if that wasn't clear - absolutely don't think
they'd gain much from shrinking it further. Anyone who cares about shrinking
it down further would probably gain even more by licensing the core and
embedding it together with other functionality anyway.

------
JohnBooty
To give you an idea of how underreported this chapter in computing history
is...

I was born in the 1970s and grew up in the 1980s. Huge computer nut since an
early age, devouring computer magazines many years before we even owned a
computer. Used Apple ]['s in school and knew which game consoles used 6502's
and their descendants.

And I still had _no idea_ that WDC was based a few miles from where I grew up.

I learned that only a few years ago!

From a local perspective, perhaps this is because they promoted themselves as
being based in historic Valley Forge, PA. When in reality, they were based in
nearby Norristown, which is kind of a downtrodden town and obviously lacks the
name recognition of a national landmark like Valley Forge. I'm sure Norristown
would have loved to trumpet their role in the computer revolution, but that
would have been tricky to reconcile with MOS's (understandable) claim to
actually hail from the next town over. Awkward!

(....or maybe it's because MOS left behind a superfund cleanup site....)

------
showerst
The (awesome) youtube electronics teacher Ben Eater has just started a series
of videos building a 6502 based computer on a breadboard, and he sells kits.

I just got my kit, so I'm really looking forward to the rest of the videos. He
also offers the schematics for those wanting to jump ahead.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnzuMJLZRdU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnzuMJLZRdU)
[https://eater.net/6502](https://eater.net/6502)

~~~
teh_klev
I've been watching this series as well. Can definitely recommend.

------
Guthur
My first programming experience was on the 6502 in the BBC micro, absolutely
loved it, especially the programming manual where it gave you the number of
clock cycles for each instruction.

~~~
billpg
I remember seeing that the "zero page" instructions were all significantly
faster and thinking "This Changes EVERYTHING!"

As if I could rewrite my code to run in only 256 bytes of working memory.

~~~
forinti
You would put only your data (or the most frequently used values, at least) in
the zero page. Your code would then be smaller and faster.

You would save a byte every time you had to load/save a value from zero page
into/from a register.

BBC Basic puts the work area for maths functions in the zero page.

~~~
bonzini
You can check at
[http://commodore64.se/wiki/index.php/Commodore_64_Memory_Map](http://commodore64.se/wiki/index.php/Commodore_64_Memory_Map)
what kind of stuff goes in the zero page for Commodore's kernal and Basic.

In particular, Basic puts the whole "get next byte" routine there at $0073. It
is self-modifying code where the address of the next program byte is the
operand of an LDA instruction. Placing the whole routine in zero page saves
enough cycles on incrementing the next program byte that it's worth spending
5% of the whole zero page on it.

~~~
forinti
Cool stuff. I've seen something similar for handling interrupts when reading
from floppies. It didn't use the zero page, but it could have.

------
jdkee
I am keen to build one of these if the SMD soldering doesn't drive me insane.

[https://monster6502.com/](https://monster6502.com/)

------
walkingolof
If you want more context to the story I recommend the following, fascinating
book.

[https://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Company-Edge-Brian-
Bagnall/...](https://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Company-Edge-Brian-
Bagnall/dp/0973864966)

~~~
vidarh
It's great, and the two follow-ups are also out (less interesting for people
mostly interested in the 8-bits, though Commodore kept a staggering amount of
8-bit R&D going way longer than they probably should have spent money on it; a
lot of it going nowhere)

Commodore: The Amiga Years

Commodore: The Final Years

(Note that there's also an older edition - "On The Edge, The spectacular rise
and fall of Commodore" also by Bagnall. That one covers most of the history of
Commodore in a single ~500 page book; the three new ones are ~500 pages each;
which one to prefer I think largely depends on how much you care about
Commodore and/or whether or not you're only interested in a particular subset
of its history - that said I don't regret having bought and read both the
original and all three new ones)

------
newnewpdro
The Amp Hour interviewed Chuck Peddle in this episode, it's a worthwhile
listen:

[https://theamphour.com/241-an-interview-with-chuck-peddle-
ch...](https://theamphour.com/241-an-interview-with-chuck-peddle-charismatic-
chipmaking-coryphaeus/)

------
dboreham
Interesting to see that KIM-1 documentation again.

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workthrowaway
back when we all dressed more formal lol :)

