The most crazy CPU in the 1990s, you must have come across it

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In 1975, a company called MOS Technology launched a microprocessor priced at $25. Since then, this CPU has been widely used in Apple computers, Nintendo FC and compatible machines, learning machines, etc. In the 1990s, Wenquxing, which almost every Chinese student had, also used this CPU, cultivating a whole generation of Chinese gamers. The name of this CPU is 6502. Let's start with its birth.

The birth of 6502

The inventor of 6502 is electronic engineer Chuck Peddle. In 1973, 35-year-old Peddle joined Motorola and was responsible for selling 6800 CPU to customers. This was an excellent CPU at the time, but it was too expensive, priced at more than $300.

Chuck Peddle, Motorola's genius engineer

So Peddle tried to convince Motorola's management to design a cheap CPU. However, the management felt that since the 6800 was so profitable, why should they make a cheap CPU to compete for their own market? Naturally, they rejected Peddle's suggestion.

But Peddle still had his own ideas in mind, and the following year he led Bill Mensch and six other engineers to join MOS Technology and began the research and development of the 6502 CPU.

The design goal of 6502 was "a better-performing and lower-priced alternative to 6800". 11 months later, 6502 was born.

The 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor that supports up to 64KB of memory. Its main frequency is the same as the 6800, 1MHz, but because the 6502 has an instruction pipeline (while one instruction is executed, the next instruction is fetched), its performance is significantly better than the 6800. And because the requirements for the process technology are relatively low, the yield rate of the 6502 is surprisingly high.

The 6502 CPU was advertised in a magazine at the time.

In the second half of 1975, 6502 went on sale, with a starting price of $25, which was only 1/15 of the price of Motorola 6800 and Intel 8080. The low price and better performance made 6502 stand out in the CPU market competition.

6502 CPU manufactured by Rockwell International

To increase production capacity, MOS Technology licensed the 6502 to Rockwell International and another semiconductor manufacturer, and later to more manufacturers, resulting in large-scale shipments of the 6502. This made Motorola 6800 and Intel 8080 miserable, and they had to reduce their prices. By 1976, the 6800 had been forced to reduce its price to $35, equivalent to 1/10 of its launch price two years ago.

Sparking the PC Revolution

To help electronic engineers build personal computers and other devices, Peddle also developed a development board called KIM-1 (Keyboard Input Monitor), which soon became popular among personal computer enthusiasts. Commodore used 6502 and KIM-1 to design PET, which quickly became popular, so Commodore acquired MOS Technology in 1976.

In April 1976, Steve Wozniak, a member of the Homebrew Computer Club and an engineer at HP, built the motherboard of the Apple I using the 6502.

Later, Steve Jobs asked someone to hand-assemble 200 Apple I computers in his parents' garage and sold them himself, but it took him ten months to sell only 25 of them. At that time, an Apple I was sold for $667, but now the auction price has reached $1 million.

Wozniak and Jobs are working on the Apple I motherboard they made. Apple I uses a 6502 CPU.

Wozniak and Jobs holding the Apple II motherboard, which also uses the 6502 CPU

In June 1977, Wozniak used the 6502 to create the Apple II. The Apple II series was a long-lived personal computer and achieved commercial success. By the time it was discontinued in 1993, more than 5 million units had been sold.

Bill Mensch, an engineer who participated in the development of 6502, later founded WDC and continued to study the 6502 architecture. The CPU of Nintendo SFC was actually developed by him.

In 1978, Bill Mensch, who participated in the design of 6502, left Commodore and founded WDC (Western Design Center), continuing the research and development of 6502 architecture, and launched CPU products such as W65C02 (CMOS version of 6502) and W65C816 (16-bit 6502). W65C816 was used in Apple IIGS computer in 1986. In 1979, Atari also joined the 6502 camp.

Atari 2600, released in 1977, uses 6507 CPU (an improved version of 6502)

According to Mensch's later statement, due to open licensing, the production of 6502 was 10 times that of other competing products. Its excellent performance and low price forced other CPU manufacturers to lower their prices, which fueled the personal computer revolution in the 1980s.

In 1981, after the successful launch of the arcade version of Donkey Kong, Yamauchi Hiroyuki commissioned Uemura Masayuki to design Nintendo's third-generation home game console FC. Many years later, Uemura Masayuki recalled in an interview with The Verge: "We did have some experience in arcades at first, and wanted to use the same large-scale integrated circuit chips, so we needed to find a manufacturer. However, at that time, manufacturers that could produce such chips were all producing personal computer chips at full capacity. Only one company had both the most advanced production equipment and no orders for the time being, and that company was Ricoh."

Masayuki Uemura, one of Nintendo's hardware leaders

In terms of the CPU selection for the FC, Masayuki Uemura wanted to use Zilog's Z80CPU (developed based on Intel's 8080), which was also the CPU used in the previous "Donkey Kong" arcade machine. The team was familiar with its development tools, but Ricoh recommended him the 6502.7 (an improved version of the 6502, with a main frequency of 1.8 MHz). Ricoh obtained the license for the 6502 and named it RP2A03.

NES (American FC) motherboard, manufactured in 1987. The chip in the red frame is Ricoh's RP2A03G (6502.7). The Ricoh RP2C02 next to it is the graphics CPU (compatible machines mostly use Taiwan's United Microelectronics UA6538). Below the CPU is a memory chip produced by Sharp

FC compatible motherboard, a combination of Taiwan's UMC UA6527 (6502 core) and UA6538, produced in week 32, 1992; Korean Hyundai memory chip, produced in week 27, 1992

Finally, Masayuki Uemura and his team were persuaded by Ricoh to use 6502.7 as the CPU for the FC. It was this chip that brought the future president Satoru Iwata to Nintendo: few people at Nintendo knew how to develop 6502 at the time, but Iwata was proficient in programming the Commodore PET computer, which used the 6502 CPU.

Satoru Iwata is the master of 6502 development

In this way, Iwata also participated in the development of FC: Iwata later recalled that he once went to Nintendo's technical staff as a technical expert to popularize the characteristics of 6502, and taught Masayuki Uemura the secret of "how to use 6502 to save storage space". "I explained to them what 6502 could do."

With the help of Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's first-party game development speed was much faster than that of third-party manufacturers, and it was able to produce more content and better picture quality with the same game cartridge capacity. After the FC was released in 1983, Satoru Iwata personally contributed five games to it: "Pinball", "Golf", "F1 Racing", "Balloon Wars" and "Motorcycle Race".

5A22CPU on SFC, produced by Ricoh, 16-bit 6502

Due to the huge success of FC, Nintendo still used the 6502 architecture in the SFC launched 7 years later. The SFC adopted the 16-bit Ricoh 5A22 CPU, which was developed based on WDC's 65C816. The main frequency was 3.6 MHz, and the maximum supported memory was increased from 64KB of 6502 to 16MB.

HuC6280A CPU on PC Engine, developed by Hudson, manufactured by Seiko Epson, CMOS version of 6502

In addition to Nintendo, there is another game console that also uses the 6502 CPU, which is the PC Engine released by NEC in 1987. The PC Engine uses the HuC6280A developed by Hudson and produced by Seiko Epson. The HuC6280A is developed based on WDC's 65C02 CPU (CMOS version of 6502).

In mainland China, the FC compatible machines/Subor learning machines that were popular all over the country at the end of the last century and the Wenquxing that almost everyone had later all used the 6502 CPU. Subor machines mostly used the UA6527 produced by Taiwan's United Microelectronics Corporation. It can be said that this CPU accompanied the childhood and youth of the Chinese people born in the 1980s and 1990s.

The classic Wenquxing CC800

Early Wenquxing electronic dictionaries were almost all powered by 6502 single-chip microcomputers. In 2001, Jinyuanjian launched CC800, which provided an API interface and its own programming language GVBasic. Programs could be written and saved, and applications and games could be downloaded online using a data cable.

Jin Yuanjian Company opened an application zone on its official website for users to download for free. This triggered a huge Wenquxing programming craze in China, and a group of programming talents and games emerged.

Two popular Wenquxing models around 2003: NC1020 and NC3000

Wenquxing's exclusive game "Heroes' Altar" was born at that time. Jin Yuanjian solidified "Heroes' Altar" into later machines, making the game extremely popular. Many players are very familiar with this game.

The game "Heroes' Altar" on Wenquxing

At that time, the PDA market had not yet taken off, and the scalability of the business communication and other products was poor and the price was high. The Wenquxing CC800 of the same period was small and exquisite, using a CR2032 button battery, and could download applications online with a data cable. Because it was aimed at student users, the price was only a few hundred yuan, which other electronic dictionaries could not do many years later. The above reasons made Wenquxing popular in China.

Nowadays, many people still miss the time when they secretly took out Wenquxing and played games in class. Some people even launched a 3DS version of Wenquxing CC800 emulator and "ported" "Heroes' Altar" to Apple iOS.

Wenquxing CC800 emulator on 3DS

Final Thoughts

Over the past 40 years, the 6502 has had a profound impact on the personal computer and home game console industries, and has changed the lives of countless people. Although Xiaobawang and Wenquxing are no longer popular, and Heroes Altar is gradually forgotten, the 6502 is still used in hundreds of millions of industrial monitoring and control computers to serve us.

What kind of fun did you have because of this CPU during your childhood, adolescence and youth?

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