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Old 03-11-2008, 02:55 AM
sje sje is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 62
Default Another idea for a kit

Idea: A 6502/65C816 kit with a classical front panel.

It's been said that the 6502 CPU was the most popular CPU of its day. But to my knowledge there was never a 6502 kit with a classical front panel, although the KIM-1 and Micro-KIM come close in some respects. Consider the idea of producing a 6502 (or the 16 bit derivative 65C816) kit with relatively easily purchasable parts. Now, the system would not be a replica of anything and so would not have the replica cool factor of the Altair kits. However, hopefully everything but the printed circuit boards could be gotten from Digikey or Mouser without too much stress or too much expense.

It seems to me that the front panel could be realized with one of the inexpensive eight bit AVR microcontrollers from Atmel. It could drive a set of shift registers and latches to work with the LEDs, switches, and busses so that operation could be done manually or by a serial link to the microcontroller.

I am *so* tempted to start breadboarding one of these.
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