OMG! The restraint to not open that package when you got it. You sir have a power I can only dream of. 😂😂😂 thank you for making this project open source. Not all heroes wear capes.
This is my favourite 6502 computer design of 2023. I love the focus on how accessible it is to get hardware manufactured these days even as a hobbiest at low volume. Hats off to an excellent design well executed.
I'd been wanting to build something based on the 6502 for a couple of years, and was fascinated by this project since you announced it and I've been following your progress. When you posted this video, I quickly downloaded the gerber files and placed my order with PCBWay (I already had most of the parts, intending to build the breadboard version, but just not having the time.) After a few hours of soldering, everything went together as easy as that, and it just worked! This is so cool. I've got to finish setting up the development system so that I can do something "useful" with it, but I'm super happy!
Thank you for bringing this project alive. It's something I wanted to do for a long time. My first computer was a Rockwell AIM 65, which I unfortunately don't have anymore. Maybe this will bring the 6502 spirit back into my life.
Greetings from Ireland. I'm so glad this came up on my feed. I was an apple II guy back in the day I think I have watched everything on RU-vid about the 6502! Great work
I wish I knew more about this stuff. I couldn't get past the lack of no pick n place file at jlcpcb, and pcbway is alien because they expect you to enter a lot of info (pcb size, number of components, etc...) that will all be answered when you upload the files, but you can't get to that without all the numbers first. pcbway kinda sucks in that regard. so I'm at a standstill. oh well... i'm glad you figured it out lol. i wish there was someone that could provide kits...
All the necessary info should be detected after you upload the gerbers. No need to change any form fields unless you want to. Web developers like to change things multiple times a day so maybe that will change. If you have any trouble with a manufacturer web site, send both zip files to your sales rep and they can help. They help people all day long with projects that are far more complex.
I only stumbled across this today - and have binge-watched nearly all of them now ;) Love the idea and the fact it's using the real processor (I've got an FPGA-based board as well but find that lacks the real nostalgia factor). I'd better start saving up to get one for myself! Excellent project and videos.😎
Truly impressed with your design and software. The fact that you have even made it all freely available is stunning. I am late to the game here... I think I have 10 more videos to catch up with. Very much appreciated. Thank you for sharing!
This is giving me flash backs to my 1986 II-e, but I had extended memory, and no color. Spent many cold lonely nights in the lab bread boarding my homebrew GC-MS senior project with my macro assembler. My kit had 6522VIA (spoofed phi2), RTC, 12-bit ADC, used a couple of AD521 amps, even learned to format ProDOS in assembly language ... the very first disk I formatted was my source code, so I did even see that mispluggary.
Awesome! This is such a good project, and I love how easy everything is, and how easily available all the parts are. I'm starting to teach my kids about computers, and things like this are really exciting to them. :)
Watched some of these videos a few months ago, then started from the beginning tonight instead of bingeing some starwars show. You go rather fast through a lot of the hardware stuff for a mere software guy like myself, a bit tricky to follow some of it but it's all good. Impressive work dude!
Thanks for putting together the Gerber and BOM files, Rumbledethump! Makes making this so easy... Thanks also for the humungous amount of time you must have poured into this project...
Very nice ! I’ve been following you on this project for a while. The conception is above my pay grade but I can appreciate it as I cut my teeth on a C64. Thank you very much for the great work! Cheers from Canada!
Great video and thank you for making this available for the community, Nice and easy build, like it a lot, I’m a 6502 fan of the Apple II forever a big Hello From Spain 😉🦾
Awesome. This is like me being back in 1982, with a Cray X-MP as a dev environment for my VIC-20. So I now have a use for the 65C02 chipset I bought but never used (yet). Cheers!
WoW nice work, I feel better seeing your little mistake. Nice to know I'm not the only one... Anyway, great video as always and thanks for bringing us all for the ride.
First off, thank you for all your time in creating this project and making it available. I have ordered my kit from PCBWay and am hoping to receive it soon. Just a heads up that, as of 3/20/2024, opting for the $30 ‘Build’ option has resulted in a 36 day delay in shipping. (I’m working with the sales rep now to either improve that date or remove & refund the $30 Build line item so that I can get going on working with the RP6502 as soon as possible. They wanted the Centroid file but accepted that it wasn’t absolutely necessary to place the order. The lack of it, however, does seem to have slowed down their ability to ship the order.)
I received by PCBWay built picoComputer, plugged in all of the IC's and it is working well. The component that slowed down the build was the '47uF Radial Ceramic Capacitor >=10V'.
Darn, now I have to see your code to learn how you interconnected both picos, but I am betting in serial. But maybe it is something more devious! Congratulations!
Great project, I like what can be done with old and new technology and this project showcases this. If you had 300 of these to publically give away sure to start a riot.😅
I've always thought it's a great concept to mix new and "old" electronics to make a retro computer. The RP2040s look as though they do an amazing job replacing all those legacy discrete ICs needed for decoding, etc. Congratulations on a very neat and well thought out project.
Pretty cool what you did with this project, in going from breadboarding to bare PCB to populated PCB - you cover all the bases for various skill levels! Looking forward to seeing what you'll do with it next!
@@rumbledethumps Thank you! It arrived today. I wasn't expecting the standoff hardware too, that was a nice surprise. I look forward to putting it together once the active parts I ordered arrive. 🙂
I followed this project since the beginning because I was looking for help for getting into circuits, and schematics. I got to say the evolution of this has been really awesome.... Honestly can't wait to see what the community does.... I know someone out there wants to put a third pico where the 6502 is....
this is absolutely wonderful! I will have one shortly! kudos!! I'm hoping you have plans to do the same with a 65C816, simply because they support 16mb ram and have so much more potential. well, here's my quarter thrown in the wishing well. Thanks again, you rock!
Yeah that would be really cool. Also just to mention if somebody wanted to, they could replace the 6502 with another raspberry pi Pico, and the pico could be its own processor, or emulate the 6502 and 65816....
This project must be a great kick-start for learning about 6502 and circuit design in general. I cannot wait to look into it the upcoming days. Thanks a lot for sharing your work! 😊
Great project and video. I'm pleased people are still using the 6502. Many of us "old timers" cut our programming teeth on this CPU when it was popular in a good proportion of home computers back in the 70's and 80s.
I hadn't run across this project before. Using the Picos for interfacing but keeping a real 6502 and other chips for actual processing is nice as you can process code through the CPU just like a real one (although I know there are quite a few FPGA cores out there now that can do spot-on emulation). Thanks!
Cool to see a pre-populated pcbway product. It also made me giggle that there are two massive pi picos that could easily emulate the 6502 on one of the two cores 😂But that’s not the point. All you now need to do is build a forth rom this is the ideal platform for forth.
The attention to detail is fantastic. Completely new to this project but it's clear that a lot of time and planning went into it. Also a great display of how advanced on-demand PCB manufacturing has become (especially for the price!)
Very cool that you managed to get this set up so people can just order one of these already assembled. The fact that PCBWay will make two for the cost of making one suggests that anyone ordering through them ought to order a spare. 😁 Thanks for setting it up! I noticed your boards are set up for the debug headers to be connected and in previous iterations you used the debug header. But you used boards that have a connector on the topside instead of pins on the bottom-does that affect things? For those who can't manage a couple of ins, I dunno if any boards are sold by 3rd party vendors with those pins soldered (though most kits include the pins if you want to do that.
This is a super cool project. I've been messing around with the 6502 and looking for a simple way to play with one with little hardware debugging.. Thanks for making this!
Nice project. I'm currently still unsure to build a picocomputer 6502 or a neo6502 or something similar, but definitely not a X16. On a first step I'm reactivating my CBM 610 to get more familiar with 6502 assembler.
Just discovered this project! Definitely thinking about building one myself. Coincidentally found your channel right after ordering a neo6502 from Olimex :)
I think I saw the video you did a while back where you soldered one of those boards. That seemed to be entirely doable for most folks as a first solder project. Not to mention the fact that one could built the system out on breadboard too if they'd like. I suspect having the two picos handling VGA and input does make the design of the PCB less complex too. It's not like you need five different ICs for bus adapters and the like.
