[Zelphyr]

What, if any, modern products still use the 6502?

EDIT: That’s not a dig against the 6502. I still fondly remember leaning BASIC in my C64 and wish now I had ventured into Assembly with it. By today’s standards it seems to have a simpler and more approachable instruction set so I’m wondering if there aren’t products I could hack on to learn Assembly with it. Or maybe I should just break out my old Commie.

[shagie]

You can still buy them at https://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/chips.cfm / https://wdc65xx.com/chips/ ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WDC_65C02 )

From the wdc65xx link:

> The W65C02S is a low power 8–bit microprocessor utilized in a vast array of products for the Automotive, Consumer, Industrial, and Medical markets. This chip features a full external data (8–bit) and address (16–bit) bus for easy integration with 8–bit peripherals and memory.

Digging in the about page:

> Through the last 30+ years as one of the most popular microprocessor architectures of all time the 65xx brand is estimated to have over six billion embedded 65xx processors shipped and is growing by hundreds of millions of units per year, provided by WDC and its licensees. The following is a partial list of high volume applications that have been successful in using 65xx processors:

> ...

> · Toys

> · Automobile dashboard

> · Appliance controllers

> · Industrial controllers

> · Embedded heart defibrillator’s

> · Pacemakers

[userbinator]

They are still found as embedded cores in computer mouses and keyboards, monitors (OSD processor/scaler), digital picture frames (https://spritesmods.com/?art=picframe&page=1), MP3 players, Furby (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17751599 , actually a 6502-subset) etc.

[kgwxd]

C64 and many Atari, Apple, and Nintendo products used it, including arcade machines. People still make new stuff, with new interesting hacks, for all of them, every day. I suspect anything new wouldn't be as interesting as playing with the old systems because if anything needed more interesting features these days, they'd use something much more modern. Back then they had to squeeze all the "interesting" they could out of the 6502 specifically. You can easily play with it in the browser [1].

[1] https://8bitworkshop.com/v3.4.0/?=&file=examples%2Fbrickgame...

[reaperducer]

Specifically the 6502, or its successors like the 65C816?

The 65C816 is still being made, so someone must use it for something.

[cbm-vic-20]

There is still a very active 6502 hacking forum at

http://forum.6502.org

(No SSL/TLS, unfortunately).

Lots of people build homebrew computers out of these things, there are a few open source OS and build chains available, etc.

[Gibbon1]

I'm unsure but I think 6502's are available as cores for semi and full custom IC's. Where the the processor core and memory is fully laidout. Bonus runs with a GHZ clock which gives you the ability to twiddle bits like mad.

So outside of retro computing you won't see a 6502 IC in the wild. But they likely are buried deep in nondescript IC's

[fulafel]

http://www.6502.org/commercial lists some of these.

[eej71]

I believe the Tamagotchi toys used the 6502.

https://hackaday.com/2013/05/24/tamagotchi-rom-dump-and-reve...

[LarryMade2]

Toys - and some of those have minimal RAM.

[forinti]

They were used a lot in cars. I'm not sure if that is still the case.