[Macworld]

Post your comments for Famous Apple chip studied by digital archaeologists here

[WarrenS]

A web writing spider might say "Some Chip"

[zarmanto]

Some radiant chip, even.

[afterli]

The notion of reconstructing a chip's operation via dissection is interesting. However, this article is written in a way that suggests that there is no manufacturing documentation for the original 6502 or any of its licensed variants:

"the only way to glean in-depth understanding of the chip is to strip away the polysilicon layers of the chip using acid, photographing the results in high-resolution."

[gecko85]

Various versions of this chip were also used in the Atari 400/800/XL computers, Commodore 64 and Vic-20, and others.

[flybynight]

Yeah... it's not *that* old. Why don't we just ask some of those people that were involved?

[archtoday]

"...and is not compatible with Internet Explorer."
There is a joke there, somewhere, I know it.

[AllanReilly]

The same chip was in the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo NES? There are worlds of difference in power between those two systems.

[snej]

AllanReilly, on 10 January 2011 - 12:15 PM, said:

The same chip was in the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo NES? There are worlds of difference in power between those two systems.

It's true. The NES had much more powerful graphics hardware, and a lot more RAM, but the CPU was the same (although maybe at a higher clock speed.)

Plenty of old-school arcade systems used 6502s too.

[wardoggie]

This reminded me of the Big Mess o' Wires project: a copper-wire CPU based on the architectures of that era.

Scroll down for some cool (if you like a big mess o' colorful wires) pics.

[synsoniq]

My Dad worked on this chip when he was at MOS. Unfortunately, he passed away about 8 years ago. Maybe there just aren't any original engineers alive, or known where they are.

[mrbach]

I think there are plenty of people around that explain how that chip works.
Maybe in a couple of years we can get some archaeologists to explain where the Internet came from.

[Kiminao]

@synsoniq--

You must be proud of the contribution your father and his fellow engineers made to computing, Synsoniq.

Your post really illustrates the reality of this situation--even though these early chips just aren't that old, 30-35 years is a LONG time in terms of fragile human life, and top engineers from earlier generations do leave us. So, while there may be people who still understand these early designs well enough to assist in their documentation _now_, in 5-10 years, there will be fewer...

[Macnutjohn]

"is not compatible with Internet Explorer."

Seems somehow fitting to me.............