Overview

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I spent a lot of time watching the Ben Eater videos on homebrewing computers and Ben Heck videos on building and modding hardware, which made me want to build a platform to program on. I wanted to build something anyone could learn everything about, and the type of computer I would have wanted to program on as a young adult. Much like how David Murray (The 8-Bit Guy) went about with his Commander X-16 design, I wanted to build the computer I would have loved to learn to program on as a kid/teenager. Staying in the 65xx series processors and 74xx series logic chips will help with that.

By the end I want to have an expandable/hackable computer kit that can run a *Nix variant and ideally run around 10MHz. (The 65816 can run as fast as 14MHz). But it also has to work as a standalone single board computer. Much like how the C64 or VIC-20 work as is, but have tons of expansion options.

I will be documenting progress here, and in blog posts with the 65xx tag. Maybe some videos, definitely lots of pictures.

What this isn't:

What this isn't is a tutorial. At least not yet. I am not an expert. I'm barely even knowledgeable. I'm trying to figure this out as I go along. So expect more posts about my frustrations than about my progress, I'm not even starting off right into the computer, but rather I'm starting the Ben Eater's kits to get a feel for everything before I jump into developing my own single board computer.

Phase 0: Initial Plan and Milestones

Reference Links:

http://wilsonminesco.com/6502primer/65tutor_intro.html
http://eater.net/6502
http://eater.net/VGA
https://www.atomiczombie.com/vulcan-74/

Assembler:

http://sun.hasenbraten.de/vasm/