iPhone 14 Pro Max
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I just bought this vintage Apple ][ motherboard, like the one I had in my first real computer in 1979.

The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is just above the Apple logo — the 6502. For a sense of the progress in lithography since then, an entire 6502 built in Apple’s fab today could fit under a single transistor in the original 6502.

And if Lace Lithography is successful in scaling beyond the use of light, then the entire Apple ][ computer could be laid out in the space of a single transistor from the original machine (another ~150x in transistor count beyond the CPU).

More below.

5 responses to “The Apple ][ 6502 — and so much Moore!”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    This is the original 6502 die, with bond pad wires for a sense of scale. It ran at 1 MHz. Deep dive & sim: http://www.visual6502.orgIn 1979, my Dad ran the world’s largest memory chip fab, and I installed his Mostek chips to upgrade to 48K of memory (inside the white box on the motherboard). I see one of his ROM chips on my motherboard too. My first real computer: my first computer — the Apple ][

    Ken Shirriff did an incredible reverse engineering of those Mostek 16Kbit DRAM chips here.

    And more on my Dad’s Mostek Days hereearly chipsThanks for the Memories

    Reply
  2. PeterThoeny Avatar
    PeterThoeny

    I got one of those while studying in Switzerland, added an external floppy drive. I don’t know how/when it got lost

    Reply
  3. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    yes.. back when floppy discs were actually floppy and televisions were embedded in wood like furniture. The Disk ][ came out in 1978. The notch on the right side was for write protect — if you covered it with the black aluminum sticker, it could not be written to. So, I figured out by experimentation, that you could use scissors to cut out a similar tab on the left side, flip the disk over, and use the backside. This doubled my disk storage per dollar. It was an undocumented feature that all "single-sided" floppies could be converted into the more expensive double-sided.

    Reply
  4. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    By college, I moved to the 68000 processor. Wrote an OS multitasker in assembly code. And then this 68000-based computer with some speech synthesis hardware from National. After programming the boot ePROM, the most difficult task was debugging the rat’s nest of wire wrap 😉 Digitalker

    Reply
  5. Mick_Danger Avatar
    Mick_Danger

    [https://www.flickr.com/photos/44124348109@N01/] I never owned an Apple II, but I owned Atari computers that were 6502 and 68000 based. Back then 128k (bank switched) was big stuff.

    Reply

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