Commodore on the cheap

rje · Post by **rje** » Fri May 29, 2020 6:47 pm

So I was watching Ben Eater's videos on YouTube. (He makes things look easy which aren't necessarily easy.)

And I thought to myself, "self, he's got an itty bitty 6502-based computer there." And I thought: if I did that with a KERNAL + BASIC 2.0 EPROM, then I'd be halfway to a Commodore "sibling" computer. It would lack I/O, video, and sound, granted, but still, it'd be something.

Then I wondered: perhaps this is the kind of reasoning chain that made David think about actualizing a Dream Computer in the first place.

I see Ben's kit is $85, and doesn't include a clock, much less I/O and video and sound. So, I can well understand how the X16 could easily be $300.

rje · Post by **rje** » Fri May 29, 2020 11:51 pm

Oh, I just had a terrible, terrible thought.

I was reading through this http://wilsonminesco.com/6502primer/potpourri.html

...and I realized that *the* cheap solution to interface keyboard, video, and other I/O with a 6502 system... would be to attach it to the Raspberry Pi.

I know, that defeats the purpose of the thing. At least to some degree.

Yuki · Post by **Yuki** » Fri May 29, 2020 11:58 pm

7 minutes ago, rje said:

...and I realized that *the* cheap solution to interface keyboard, video, and other I/O with a 6502 system... would be to attach it to the Raspberry Pi.

Yeah, better use an emulator on the Raspberry Pi at this point. But at the same time, the new ZX Spectrum uses a Raspberry Pi as a tape emulator, so yeah. Depends what you're going for.

In any case, I would probably try to use an Arduino for that before resorting to a Raspberry Pi. It's even cheaper, and it's more similar to the hardware that's already there.