Who made the 6502 CPU?

Who made the 6502 CPU?

The breakthrough that permitted this cost reduction, says Bill Mensch, who created the 6502 with Peddle, was a minimal instruction set combined with a fabrication process that “yielded 10 times as many good chips as the competition.” The 6502 almost single-handedly forced the price of processors to drop, helping launch …

Are 6502 processors still made?

It’s Still in Production The Western Design Center, Inc, founded by Bill Mensch of Motorola and MOS fame, sells modern versions of the 6502 in both the classic 40 pin DIP package (appears to be pin-compatible with the original), as well as more modern surface mount packages.

Can you still buy 6502?

The latest version of the 6502 is still manufactured and sold. You need to search for it by the official manufacturer’s product code “W65C02S6TPG-14”. Western Design Center (that first “W”) licenses the manufacture of the chip to various silicon foundries, which wholesale them to dealers you can buy from online.

Where is the 6502 used?

6502 or 6502-variant CPUs were used in all of Commodore’s floppy disk drives for all of their 8-bit computers, from the PET line (some of which had two 6502-based CPUs) through the Commodore 128D, including the Commodore 64, and in all of Atari’s disk drives for all of their 8-bit computer line, from the 400/800 …

How many logic gates does a 6502 have?

A 6502 made from 74-series logic gates running at 20 MHz #VintageComputing.

Does 6502 have RAM?

Memory. The 6502 is an 8-bit processor with a 16-bit address bus. It is therefore able to access 64 kilobytes (216 bytes). Since each 16-bit address is comprised of two 8-bit bytes, memory can be viewed as 256 pages of 256 bytes each.

How does a 6502 microprocessor work?

The 6502 uses a one-megahertz clock, therefore a clock cycle takes 1 microsecond. Finally, the PC will be incremented so it points to the next instruction. Now, the process can begin again.

What was the speed of the MOS 6502?

When it was completed in the Spring of 1975, the MOS 6502 initially ran at about 1Mhz, the same as the Motorola 6800. However, 6500’s performed about 4 times the number of calculations a 6800 could. In a 2005 book about Commodore, Bill Mensch is quoted as saying he had the 6502 running at about 12Mhz.

What happened to the original 6502 microprocessor?

Soon after the 6502’s introduction, MOS Technology was purchased outright by Commodore International, who continued to sell the microprocessor and licenses to other manufacturers. In the early days of the 6502, it was second-sourced by Rockwell and Synertek, and later licensed to other companies.

Why did MOS Technology discontinue the 6501?

Motorola sues MOS Technology over the similarity of the 6501 and 6502 processors to the 6800. In an out-of-court settlement, MOS Technology withdraws the 6501 from the market. About the same time MITS ships one of the first PCs, the Altair 8800 with one kilobyte (KB) of memory, as a $397 mail-order kit.

What kind of consoles use the 6502 microcontroller?

Popular video game consoles and computers, such as the Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit family, Apple II, Nintendo Entertainment System, Commodore 64, Atari Lynx, BBC Micro and others, use the 6502 or variations of the basic design.