http://www.e-basteln.de/computing/65f02/65f02/
The 6502 was the CPU in my first computer (an Apple II plus), as well as many other popular home computers of the late 1970s and 80s. It lived on well into the 1990s in game consoles and chess computers, mostly in its updated “65C02” CMOS version. Here’s a re-implementation of the 65C02 in an FPGA, in a pin-compatible format that lets you upgrade those old computers and games to 100 MHz clock rate!
The concept
The idea of implementing a CPU core inside an FPGA is not new, of course. In fact, the CPU core I am using is not my own, but was developed as a 6502 core by Arlet Ottens, and extended to cover the 65C02 opcodes by Ed Spittles and David Banks. A big thank-you to Arlet, Ed, and Dave for developing the core and sharing it freely! Links to their original work are on the Files & Links page.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 14 2021, @05:35PM (1 child)
That it was a kludgy and unprofessional design?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 14 2021, @10:44PM
It was the right design at the time.
Woz ruthlessly reduced the part count. This meant it was "more" affordable. (Well, it also meant a higher profit margin for Apple!) Now, that crazy, super-integrated design of course meant it was too hard to expand the Apple II design in an incremental fashion. To take the platform forward, they had to scrap the old architecture. This led to the Apple IIgs which came too late in my opinion.