I’d been unboxing some of my electronics maker history, that had almost been forgotten after having been packed away in storage for 35 years (or so).
One of my first discoveries was this Wire-Wrap Motorola MC6809 CPU board, which brought back a flood of memories.
The Motorola MC6809 was, and remains, my favorite 8-bit CPU of all time. Back in the 1980’s I had experienced hand assembling Machine Code for several 8-bit microprocessors, including the Motorola MC6800, the MOS 6502, and the Zilog Z80, in addition to the MC6809.
The 6809 provided the most elegant and clean instruction set of these, making it an absolute pleasure to code for, and therefore also creating some frustration when having to return to again working within the limitations of the 6502, when later developing code for the Commodore 64.
So, I quickly dusted off my rediscovered board. Unfortunately, any notes I’d made about it’s design were not to be found, but I figured it would be a bit of fun to re-visit this Retro 8-bit CPU board, and see if I could fire it up again after all these years. 🙂
This resulted in a couple of videos, following me along on this journey.
In Part 1, “Introduction“, I take an initial closer look at the board, and I include a journey down memory lane, recollecting what it was like as a teenage digital electronics enthusiast in the late 70’s / early 80’s, the exciting early days of the 8-bit microprocessor.
In Part 2, “Fire it up! – and Hello World“, I try to fire it up for the first time in 35 years, and demonstrate a simple Assembly Code HELLO WORLD!
As a sub-note, the Part 2 video was somewhat delayed in it’s release. The reason for this was that I had high expectations of being able to share a fun fault-finding journey, in trying to get this back up and running after 35 years gathering dust in storage.
But, to my surprise and, yes, dissapointment, the board just fired-up first time! I was so gobsmacked that the video I’d been recording was just stopped at that point, and was left unedited for over a year. It was only after multiple requests for a follow-up, that I decided to take the originally shot “Fire it up!” video and finish it off with a demonstration of the ASSIST09 monitor, and an appropriate “Hello World” Assembly Code program as a welcome back for the MC6809.
Hopefully you enjoy my little rediscovery journey as much as I did. If so, you might perhaps also enjoy some of the follow-up projects that this little journey lead me on to.