Excavating the microprocessor responsible for the home computing revolution

Obligatory link to the Visual 6502 (heavy JS): http://visual6502.org/JSSim/index.html

And Jason Scott is Kickstarting a documentary on the 6502 (and one on "Tape" and one on "Arcades"). http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/textfiles/the-jason-scot...

Here's a fascinating interview with Chuck Peddle, lead designer of the 6502:

http://retrobits.libsyn.com/show-123-an-interview-with-chuck...

A good book that has quite a bit of CSG and chuck peddle commentary on the 6502 and commodore more specifically is Commodore: A Company on the Edge http://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Company-Edge-Brian-Bagnall/d... It goes into how Chuck was at times doing a roadshow with the 6502 educating and assisting manufacturers on developing applications for the 6502 and related chips.

The 6502 powers Bender Rodriguez, Hecho en Mexico!

Hey, the first chip I programmed real machine code for. Of course, I had to poke it in with BASIC.

Some interesting details left out in this article: Commodore bought MOS already in 1976 and shortly after fused it with CSG (Commodore Semiconductor Group), but kept the MOS label alive and let the logo remain on current and subsequent IC designs for several years later. A not insignificant portion of Commodore's revenues came from selling licenses for the 6502 family. The only 6502 core in use today, the 65C02, along with derivatives such as the 65C816, are owned by WDC, which was founded by Bill Mensch a few years after Commodore's purchase of MOS.