OT: RIP Chuck Peddle who designed the 6502 microprocessor

[Andrew]

[Nick Odell]

Gosh: I'd not realised before that it was essentially one man's work. But I suppose in those days it was more normal. I wonder how many of us would be here on these newsgroups if we hadn't had access to 6502 based computers at some stage?

Nick

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

I used z80 based machines myself, but I'm sure varients of the chip have been used by me in the past. I guess modern processors tend to have their specs defined and then are designed by other computers for the heavy lifting, so to speak. Brian

[The Nomad]

Me for one ... BBC Computer - Oh a wonderful thing - I wonder where mine is now ... ?

Avpx

[Bob Eager]

I'm afraid that was the seventh or eighth one I wrote serious assembly language programs for!

[charles]

Mine is in the loft, but my RISC PC and my Iyonix are on my home network and get used from time to time,

[Dave Plowman (News)]

My RPC gets used a lot more than from time to time. ;-)

[John Rumm]

He was a lead designer on the Commodore PET computers as well IIUC.

Yup, many of the notable bits of historically significant computing were often one man or very small teams.

It would certainly have been a different world. My first computer was Z80, but the bulk of the ones I learnt on and "grew up" with were 6502 based.

[Andrew]

The Z80 is till going strong in CMOS super-integrated form with all the support and IO chips in one package. Mostly (only?) used as a device controller now, just like the current CMOS version of the 6502.

Andrew

[Vir Campestris]

Me for one. I don't recall ever using one.

Apart from the 6809 (lovely little chip) and the 68k all the small machines I've used have been Intel based.

Andy

[Andy Burns]

First three machines for me (PET, UK101, BBC).

I found the 6809 was pleasantly similar to the 6502 (with a 'B' accumulator, multiply instruction and moveable page zero).

[Bob Eager]

I did some 6502 programming, but it wasn't formative.

That came quite late on (about 12 years in) for me. Before that it was ICL 4130, PDP-11, PDP-10, Z80, VAX...

The Z80 was probably the nearest, but also almost the last of those.

[Vir Campestris]

So it's like the 6502, but doesn't have the annoying limitations?

The second stack is also sometimes useful.

Andy

[Cursitor Doom]

One of Chuck's last interviews where he explains the history of his involvement in microcomputers has been uploaded here:

[The Natural Philosopher]

Or Zilog

Yeah, I never coded for or owned a 6502 either.

like you Z80, 6809, 8086/88/188

Bit of work on SPARC but only via C And power PC.

[Vir Campestris]

I just looked it up BTW - the 6809 has twice as many transistors as the

6502. There are reasons for the limitations.

Andy