The Sorbus Computer
The Sorbus Computer explained in a five minutes
lightning talk.
The Sorbus Computer started with the idea on building a very simple and
cheap 65C02 based computer. It was intended to show the operation of the CPU
for a talk about historic computers during a talk and workshop (slides blow).
Also this computer being simple, it is also a good project to learn
soldering. So, just grab the gerber files from the Github project send them to a
PCB manufacturer of your choice. Buy the connectors, sockets, resistors, CPU
and microcontroller board, and solder your own computer. It sounds like more
effort than it acually is.
Other Peoples Opinions
Important Notice
As of now, this page is just a stub. It is expected to grow over the next
couple of weeks.
Requirements / Features
- more a toy than a full featured computer
- open source
- keep it simple, stupid
- easy to solder
- expandable / modular
- run like and old computer → can mimic Apple 1
- run diagnostic monitor
- learn about 6502 → show CPU in action
- cheap: ~€15 / computer, including PCBs when buying refurbished 65C02s
Also:
- While being designed for use with a 65C02, it has also run 6502 and
65C816 processors successfully.
- Since it's using the RP2040 updating/changing firmware is easy: just hold
the BOOTSEL button during connecting USB and transfer the new firmware via
file copy. For development purposes the usage of picotool is strongly
recommended.
Operation
While all GPIO pins of the RP2040 are used for communicating with the 65C02
CPU, commication to the "outside world" is only possible via the USB UART of
the RP2040. So terminal software is required for operation. Suggestions are:
- microcom or minicom from your favorite Linux distro
- cu from MacOS
- PuTTY for Windows
Here are examples to see how you can toy around with the Sorbus Computer:
Downloads
- Slides for the introductionary talk:
Sorbus_Computer.pdf (Size: 1973689; Date: 2023-07-16, 11:30 CEST)
Links
