I really enjoy how popular retro tech of the 6502 era has become (and thus how much content is created about the subject) from ~= 2017ish to now. For me it started on YouTube with 8-bit-guy and Adrian, but clearly it's in the zeitgeist in general, in a way that I don't feel like it was in the '00s or early '10s.
Those of you who are Gen X and grew up with parents who bought you computers at a young age, you are so fortunate. Reading those manuals and learning to code in assembly gave that cohort an amazing fundamental understanding of computing. It's similar to the understanding of the Internet's underpinnings that we Millennial geeks gained by experimenting with HTML and the Web, before everything was sealed up and packaged for consumption.
But I sure would love to experience some long summers as a kid in the early 80s with nothing but time and a Commodore 64 and its manual.
For me, this caught my attention because I am currently re-doing Ben Eater's 6502 project[0]. (I'm spreading it out to more breadboards connected together with a bunch of breadboard power rails as the data and address busses, and I'm planning to add some stuff to read programs from audio once that's done. I also want to add a custom keyboard and a forth kernel. Oh yeah, and read/write SDcard blocks with SPI.)
If I had a kid (I'm too old for that now), I would absolutely buy a working Commodore 64 for the kid as their first computer, complete with the fantastic manual that came with it. When they understand how it works, then they can have a tablet and a modern computer. The C64 manual has instructions for BASIC programming, as well as how to program the peripheral chips to make sounds and graphics. And then in the back it goes into assembly language including documentation for all the opcodes, and then in the very back of the manual were the full schematics for the computer.
I think it's still an amazing resource for anyone wanting to learn how computers work. It literally changed my life. Before I got the C64 when I was 15 years old, I had an Atari 400 and then Atari 600. There was very little available to me in the way of documentation for the Atari for anything beyond BASIC programming, and I found that very limiting. The C64 and its manual opened up a whole other world to me. I taught myself assembly programming in about a week. I got into BBSs, and eventually into the "demoscene" where I got to use all the assembly programming I learned. This built the foundation for the rest of my computing life and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
I've thought about teaching a beginning programming course at the local community college. If I do, I'll start with just a bit of BASIC 2.0 to introduce some simple concepts like input, output, variables, and loops, before moving on to current "real languages."
I grew up on 8088 and then 6502 and 8086 assembly. The 8086 had more registers and more useful variations of registers. However, it emotionally felt like after eliminating the accumulator and stack pointer: the 6502 had general purpose registers (though only 2 of them!) and that the 8086 did not have any general purpose registers. Even though there were more 8086 registers, each one had a different "purpose": base register, counter, data, base pointer, source index, destination index. These specializations never felt like a hardware optimization, but a series of horrific programming constraints.
I really enjoy how popular retro tech of the 6502 era has become (and thus how much content is created about the subject) from ~= 2017ish to now. For me it started on YouTube with 8-bit-guy and Adrian, but clearly it's in the zeitgeist in general, in a way that I don't feel like it was in the '00s or early '10s.
Those of you who are Gen X and grew up with parents who bought you computers at a young age, you are so fortunate. Reading those manuals and learning to code in assembly gave that cohort an amazing fundamental understanding of computing. It's similar to the understanding of the Internet's underpinnings that we Millennial geeks gained by experimenting with HTML and the Web, before everything was sealed up and packaged for consumption.
But I sure would love to experience some long summers as a kid in the early 80s with nothing but time and a Commodore 64 and its manual.
For me, this caught my attention because I am currently re-doing Ben Eater's 6502 project[0]. (I'm spreading it out to more breadboards connected together with a bunch of breadboard power rails as the data and address busses, and I'm planning to add some stuff to read programs from audio once that's done. I also want to add a custom keyboard and a forth kernel. Oh yeah, and read/write SDcard blocks with SPI.)
[0] https://eater.net/6502
We had an Atari 800 with a 6502. Learned BASIC on that and also the Apple II in school which also has a 6502
If I had a kid (I'm too old for that now), I would absolutely buy a working Commodore 64 for the kid as their first computer, complete with the fantastic manual that came with it. When they understand how it works, then they can have a tablet and a modern computer. The C64 manual has instructions for BASIC programming, as well as how to program the peripheral chips to make sounds and graphics. And then in the back it goes into assembly language including documentation for all the opcodes, and then in the very back of the manual were the full schematics for the computer.
I think it's still an amazing resource for anyone wanting to learn how computers work. It literally changed my life. Before I got the C64 when I was 15 years old, I had an Atari 400 and then Atari 600. There was very little available to me in the way of documentation for the Atari for anything beyond BASIC programming, and I found that very limiting. The C64 and its manual opened up a whole other world to me. I taught myself assembly programming in about a week. I got into BBSs, and eventually into the "demoscene" where I got to use all the assembly programming I learned. This built the foundation for the rest of my computing life and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
I have kids and new computers absolutely suck for introducing them to computing. A C64 would be perfect.
I've thought about teaching a beginning programming course at the local community college. If I do, I'll start with just a bit of BASIC 2.0 to introduce some simple concepts like input, output, variables, and loops, before moving on to current "real languages."
I grew up on 8088 and then 6502 and 8086 assembly. The 8086 had more registers and more useful variations of registers. However, it emotionally felt like after eliminating the accumulator and stack pointer: the 6502 had general purpose registers (though only 2 of them!) and that the 8086 did not have any general purpose registers. Even though there were more 8086 registers, each one had a different "purpose": base register, counter, data, base pointer, source index, destination index. These specializations never felt like a hardware optimization, but a series of horrific programming constraints.
Michael’s blog is one of my favorites. His “Ultimate Guide” talks are great and I rewatch them at least once a year.
Ultimate Guide to the C64: https://youtu.be/ZsRRCnque2E?si=v4qQ9mCx3MafEwAq
Ultimate Guide to the Game Boy: https://youtu.be/HyzD8pNlpwI?si=gn-F8yuRPJKoXmC7
Ultimate Guide to the Apollo Guidance Computer: https://youtu.be/xx7Lfh5SKUQ?si=3qbvMohcGo6mBLrJ
(2008)
https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/CPU_unofficial_opcodes