The way the PS/2 keyboard is handled has always been something we were never quite happy with. The key points being: The PS/2 controller had no way of signalling that there has been a new keystroke, the buffer had to be polled via SPI. The PS/2 controller had no way of talking to the keyboard and had to rely for the keyboard to initialize itself properly. Also, typematic rate and delay could not be set, as couldn’t the states of the keyboard LEDs.

Recently, Michael Steil published a blog post about connecting NES and SNES Controller to a 6502-based system showing how to use NES and SNES controllers on a C64 without the need for any special hardware, by just connecting them to the C64’s user port. Why not use his approach and adapt it to the Steckschwein? The Steckschwein has a User Port, too, albeit a very different one as the C64. Basically, the Steckschwein-User-Port consists of the complete Port A of the VIA, plus the /RESET and /IRQ lines.

Chuck Peddle, the main designer of the 6502, has passed away on Dec. 15th, 2019. Peddle was one of the engineers that developed the 6800 at Motorola. He later went to MOS in order to implement his vision of an 8bit CPU for way less than $300, which was Motorola’s price for the 6800. This idea of a cheap but powerful CPU materialized as the 6501, and finally the 6502. That very chip, which started the microcomputer revolution, and on which both Marko and myself began to write our first code ever at an early age.

Back from the VCFB (Vintage Computer Festival Berlin) 2019 where we had good talks, met interesting people and got new ideas. Especially from Michael Steil who just asked the simple question “How you can develop software for the Steckschwein without an emulator?” With the answer in my mind I felt a little annoyed and also “triggered” at the same time… However, Michael Steil was nice enough to strip down his Commander X16-Emulator into a barebone 65c02 computer emulator, so all we had to do was to implement our memory map (easy) and borrow a V9958 video chip implementation from blueMSX and implement it into the emulator (hard).

Marko talked about his Pacman port to the Steckschwein at VCFb. Basically it’s the same talk he did at VCFe in April, but this time, there’s a video. Enjoy! https://media.ccc.de/v/vcfb19_-_111_-_de_-_201910121615_-_pac-man_auf_dem_steckschwein_-_marko_lauke