Re:The 6502 microprocessor is 35 years old as of September 16th
by DiabloD3 on Friday September 17, 2010 @08:56AM
(#1700943)
Don't forget what the 6502 was in. The NES used it, the Apple II used it, and the C64, and a few early arcade games, and the early Ataris. The SNES used the 16 bit variant of it called the 65C816, as did the Apple IIGS.
Interesting side note: The Apple IIGS could run normal Apple II 8bit software and GS-only 16bit software... Nintendo had planned the same for the SNES, but bailed on the idea early on, afraid of the backwards compatibility cannibalizing SNES game sales.
Sony, who was an important part of designing the SNES, produced the SPC700 sound DSP (which had a 6502-like instruction set, its own RAM, and a normal DSP companion core to do mixing, panning, volume, and filtering).
Incidentally, Sony had a working prototype for a add-on CD drive for the SNES (it used the expansion port on the bottom most people didn't know existed, and the SNES would sit on the drive). The drive also included a secondary independent 65C816, sorta like SA-1 chip used in Super Mario RPG (which ran 3x faster, had its own RAM, could MMIO and DMA to hardware in the SNES and interrupt the main CPU to do so).
By the time Sony was ready to ship the device with Nintendo, the SegaCD add-on for the Genesis had already crashed and burned, and Nintendo decided to back out because they thought CDs had no future for gaming.
Sony decided to make their own console, replacing the Super Nintendo "component" of their CD add-on, and produced the Playstation. The Playstation sound chip was similar to the SPC700 (but vastly enhanced for CD quality audio), but the rest of the Playstation was decidedly not like a SNES.
Sony, during the development of the Playstation 2, decided to add backwards compatibility as a feature when Nintendo didn't.
Interesting side note: The Apple IIGS could run normal Apple II 8bit software and GS-only 16bit software... Nintendo had planned the same for the SNES, but bailed on the idea early on, afraid of the backwards compatibility cannibalizing SNES game sales.
Sony, who was an important part of designing the SNES, produced the SPC700 sound DSP (which had a 6502-like instruction set, its own RAM, and a normal DSP companion core to do mixing, panning, volume, and filtering).
Incidentally, Sony had a working prototype for a add-on CD drive for the SNES (it used the expansion port on the bottom most people didn't know existed, and the SNES would sit on the drive). The drive also included a secondary independent 65C816, sorta like SA-1 chip used in Super Mario RPG (which ran 3x faster, had its own RAM, could MMIO and DMA to hardware in the SNES and interrupt the main CPU to do so).
By the time Sony was ready to ship the device with Nintendo, the SegaCD add-on for the Genesis had already crashed and burned, and Nintendo decided to back out because they thought CDs had no future for gaming.
Sony decided to make their own console, replacing the Super Nintendo "component" of their CD add-on, and produced the Playstation. The Playstation sound chip was similar to the SPC700 (but vastly enhanced for CD quality audio), but the rest of the Playstation was decidedly not like a SNES.
Sony, during the development of the Playstation 2, decided to add backwards compatibility as a feature when Nintendo didn't.