65 Reasons To Celebrate The 6502

2024-01-26 00:26:53

"The legendary chip from 1975 that helped start the home computer revolution."

I can remember sharing the manual for the 6502 with my school friend, Chris. He had a BBC micro computer and I had a Commodore Vic 20.

To do the machine code I remember you had to:

compile into 6502 instructions what you wanted to do yourself - probably on paper
(the machine code had absolute power to read and change any memory address anywhere)
write a BASIC function that 'poked' the individual 8 bit codes of those instructions into memory
then call that set of instructions as an assembler program

We were chuffed when we managed to draw a straight line from one point to another on the screen.

Thinking Allowed