"Serious" scientific applications

[carlsson]

Of course one grape (druva). Otherwise it would become much too fruity. If you feel adventurous, you could exchange it with exactly one strawberry.

[pitcalco]

Schema!

I love your code. I did a few astronomy programs myself many years ago, especially some planet finding routines but never a sun finder like your code. I'd love to add that to my collection.

Some more serious VIC projects: perhaps an oscilloscope. Connect a couple probes to the user port and voila! Anyone ever seen one of those?

[pitcalco]

As an aside: has the patent on the 6502 microprocessor expired yet? Perhaps there is an opportunity here for some low-cost applications and devices.

[carlsson]

The patent should've expired. Unless I'm mistaken, a patent can only be held for 20 years? Would you implement a 6502 in VHDL similar to all those C1, XGS and other FPGA experiment boards?

[pitcalco]

The patent should've expired. Unless I'm mistaken, a patent can only be held for 20 years? Would you implement a 6502 in VHDL similar to all those C1, XGS and other FPGA experiment boards?

Yes, certainly. I admit I had to look up those things as I was not so familiar with them, but that would be among the applications I would like to see for a generic 6502.

I wonder if there would be any commercially viable benefit to completely retrofitting the 6502. I would like to implement it in all sort of devices and machinery, not just desktop computers.

[gklinger]

I believe The Western Design Center is still making and selling the 6502.

[carlsson]

Alternatively you could design your own CPU, making it as ortogonal as you want. The drawback is that you wouldn't get thousands (?) of programmers who already know 6502 code, but most of those would within short amount of time learn your new CPU if they bother developing programs for it at all. The 6502 is a nice processor for the mid-70's, and was useful in home computers during the 80's, but frankly it isn't the ultimate in low-end 8-bit processor design.

[nippur72]

If you are looking into FPGA, consider that free versions of the 6502 (and its variants) already exists, like the T65 core used in MikeJ's port of VIC-20.

As an aside: is anyone able to register on 6502.org forum?

[orion70]

Necromancing this thread, because I was reading some old issues of RUN magazine, and found a couple of articles that might be of interest:
1) HERE's an in-depth review of the Vaisala weather station already mentioned as one of my Christmas dreams
2) and HERE, the VIC used as a controller in a power plant, and it was already 1986!
Have fun reading those articles, who knows if someone one day will create a weather station for the VIC (the power plant being quite difficult to reproduce ).

[pitcalco]

Indeed, the Vaisala weather station was of great interest to me. I would love to find a schematic diagram and/or kit to build that or something similar and get such a weather station running. Then linking that VIC to another that could broadcast automated weather reports on weather radio (which at present does not exist in my part of the world) would breathe new life into the VIC...well, at least prove a principle.

[RJBowman]

My father wanted to use the VIC to time the speed of bullets. The bullets would have completed a circuit by passing through paper with sheets of metal foil laminated to both sides. The bullet would pass through two such laminated sheets, and a time reading would be taken to calculate the bullet's velocity.

The VIC's CPU speed was not quite up to the task, but my father acquired a special timing chip from an electrical engineer friend. Alas the project was never completed.

We did manage to build a nice board for controlling a stepper motor for my brother's star-tracking telescope. It plugged into the joystick port, and worked just as well with the C-64.

[nippur72]

The VIC's CPU speed was not quite up to the task, but my father acquired a special timing chip from an electrical engineer friend.

do you remember if it was it programmed in BASIC? I ask because VIC timer chips are pretty fast, but they require to be programmed in machine language. For example the timer is used to measure the duration of the pulse of the PWM modulation from the tape recorder.

[tlr]

The VIC's CPU speed was not quite up to the task, but my father acquired a special timing chip from an electrical engineer friend.

do you remember if it was it programmed in BASIC? I ask because VIC timer chips are pretty fast, but they require to be programmed in machine language. For example the timer is used to measure the duration of the pulse of the PWM modulation from the tape recorder.

The resolution is at best ~1us though. For a 1 cm thick sheet that will result in quite course steps for typical bullet speeds (ref).

[RobertBe]

I still have to write my report of when I visited an amateur astronomer in whose observatory he had his telescope connected to a VIC-20 in order to record the data (telemetry) that he got from stars and moons.

A few months ago,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
July 27-28 Commodore Vegas Expo v9 -
http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex

[Kweepa]

The resolution is at best ~1us though. For a 1 cm thick sheet that will result in quite course steps for typical bullet speeds (ref).

But there are two sheets, each with a contact switch. If placed a meter apart, it would take 1ms to get from one to the other for a fast bullet. That should be plenty of time. The trick would be latching the switch output when the bullet goes through it.

Code: Select all

    [=>          ||                               ||