4 ms·
> The MCL65+ is a 6502 accelerator card which uses a 600Mhz Arduino Teensy4.1 microcontroller to emulate a 6502 microprocessor as well as its bus interface sign
by titzer 6y ago
> The MCL65+ is a 6502 accelerator card which uses a 600Mhz Arduino Teensy4.1 microcontroller to emulate a 6502 microprocessor as well as its bus interface signals. It was designed to be a drop-in replacement for the original 6502 processor
Oh man, that is really cool. The possibility for retro computers to be actually usable tools by giving them a little more horsepower and RAM is really neat!
- sircastor 6y agoAs a matter of pedantry (maybe), I’m inclined to point out that a Teensy 4 is not an Arduino, and not a microcontroller in its own right. It’s a module that runs an NXP chip. That said, I agree, this is really cool. Emulating the chip calls onboard is really neat.
- mastax 6y agoI was going to say, don't let Arduino LLC catch you calling it that ;)
- omgtehlion 6y agoIt is definitely not an "Arduino", and to be more pedantic, the chip is from Freescale (which is now owned by NXP), but not from NXP itself.
- rbanffy 6y agoThey can be useful right now. All you need is a way to allow them to communicate with modern computers. The biggest issue is that most of the OSs of the time had no concept of a remote or shared disk, or a network. If it has that, it’s easier to integrate them.
- diydsp 6y agoSome consider it a feature that they can't communicate quickly with other computers. They don't need overhead of security. With limited networking, activities are simply different from modern computers.
- rbanffy 6y agoThe use that makes most sense, I think, is word processing. We don’t need much to write - George R. R. Martin still uses WordStar, Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2020 on an 8-bit Kaypro and Jerry Pournelle used his custom built Zeke II for far longer than it’d be reasonable. Being offline also removes a lot of tempting distractions, which, for me at least, is a killer feature. I also have an unhealthy love for physical terminals. A lot of what I do could be done on those.
- p1mrx 6y agoWith all the computation and memory stuffed into a modern microcontroller, is it still a retro computer? At some point, you might as well just emulate the whole thing in software.
- scruffyherder 6y agoIt’s also a proof. It’s one thing to code around issues it’s another thing to actually run on metal
- ksherlock 6y agoIn this case, it's emulating a 6502 processor with onboard RAM/ROM. The hardware that make it an Apple II+ is not emulated.