Work · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to m6502, a 6502 CPU for FPGAs and Tiny Tapeout
Hey HN, Recently built an Apple II emulator and at the same time was getting into Tiny Tapeout and decided it would be cool to build a cycle-accurate 6502 CPU and an MCU for it. It's cycle accurate and the core itself should be 100% compatible with a stock MOS 6502 (would need to still test this though!). Tested on some FPGAs (fomu, ulx3s) and works great, hoping to get it taped out in the upcoming IHP26a shuttle. Also as part of the project I built a bus multiplexer to allow memory/bus access from an RP2040 to work around the limited pin count on Tiny Tapeout. This let's you load up…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1
Yet another 6502 emulator that one day dreams of being an Atari 2600. - haldean/x6502
2013 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2
Finally got my hobby OS up and running on real hardware. I love the old IBM thinkpads, so thought it was the perfect machine to get it working on. Been working on it for quite some time now, but this has been a big milestone!
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3
Micro Kernel / Bootloader for Ben Eater's 6502 Computer - janroesner/sixty5o2
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4
Disclaimer, I have not yet placed the order. But JLCPCB have so far excepted all files and config so I have 1 more button to press. If anyone see some obvious mistake please send feedback. This project grew out of curiosity. Loved the https://monster6502.com/ project but that is on another level. Here I tried to stay "reasonable" and added a Raspberry Pico 2 W on the back to drive it all. But also, was curious if Claude could pull this off. Guess I will have to place that order to call the cards.
Jul 2026 · epatel.github.io · its alternatives →
- 5
A while back I wrote a CHIP-8 emulator (which is considered the Hello, World! of emulators and is more accurately a virtual machine since historically CHIP-8 was an interpreted language running on top of the COSMAC VIP to make game programming easier). But a few months ago I got really interested in embedded software, so decided it would be neat to port my emulator to a STM32 MCU and design a console around it as a learning experience, since CHIP-8 never existed as a physical system. I didn't know much about embedded software when I began, and even less about electronics, but I managed to…
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6
Hi! me and my friends together built an 8 bit CPU implemented in Logisim purely from scratch. The control unit of this system does not implement the generic microcode ROM or any kind of RAM. This was made purely from discrete logic gates and coded the system to run different programs. key features: Custom 16-instruction Harvard ISA, 8-bit fixed format, 4 general purpose registers Hardwired control unit built entirely from AND/OR gate logic matrix Dual-phase clocking to eliminate race conditions Bootstrap Control Unit that cold-boots via ROM-to-RAM transfer Early-exit conditional…
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7
The 6502ctl project is an Arduino controller for the 6502 CPU. The controller controls all 6502 pins, including the clock signal and interrupts, and simulates an address and data bus with attached memory and an output peripheral. The controller includes a clock-cycle debugger with disassembler. An assembler is also included with the project.
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 8
A Flipper Zero clone, but cheapest, DIY and simply Open Source, made with Arduino IDE - lraton/FlopperZiro
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Finally finished my little CPU project, RISCY-V02. I built it (with Claude) to challenge the notion that the 6502 was a "local optimum" in its transistor budget. Given the constraints of 1970s home computers (~1 MHz DRAM, so raw clock speed doesn't help), could RISC have been a better design choice? This design argues yes: pipelining, barrel shifters, and more registers beat microcode PLAs, questionable addressing modes, and hardware BCD. Highlights: 8x 16-bit general-purpose registers (vs 3x 8-bit on 6502) 2-stage pipeline (Fetch/Execute) with speculative fetch 61 fixed 16-bit…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10IW
2021 · mdw.la · its alternatives →
- 11MI
2025 · carimbo.run · its alternatives →
- 12
A clock app for my Apple ][ clone in 6502 assembly, using interrupts generated by an inductive proximity sensor and a physical pendulum clock. I wanted to polish the code a bit more before sharing (I especially dislike the self modifying code part), but the computer seems to have developed a hardware problem lately and it keeps crashing (bad RAM chip most likely), so I am sharing as is.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13TA
1. Single universal binary, that can be natively executed on every hardware platform Mac OS X was made for (32/64 bit, PowerPC/x86/AppleSilicon). 2. Minimalistic gadget-style design. If launched as a tool, there is no menubar, no dock icon, no nothing, just the clock window. 3. Support for hidpi and dark mode for environments, that have them. 4. Window title bar for moving the window with a mouse, and a handle to resize it (latter for OS versions, that have it). 5. Can be easily ported to GNUStep and thus other OSes (sources under GPLv3). 6. Simple Makefile build system.
2022 · tycho.sytes.net · its alternatives →
- 14
DAN64 is a open software and open hardware project to build an 8-bit microcomputer using an AVR microcontroller.
2015 · usebox.net · its alternatives →
- 15
2016 · youtube.com · its alternatives →
- 16
The core question: how did HP's scientific calculators actually work at the gate level? That rabbit hole led to building one from scratch. The architectural decision everything else follows from: a decimal calculator should store numbers as BCD — one decimal digit per 4-bit nibble. A standard byte-oriented CPU (Z80, 6502) fights that layout constantly. So I designed a small custom CPU in Verilog where 4 bits is the natural data width and memory is nibble addressable. What the project covers: - Custom CPU: Harvard architecture, 12-bit ISA, 8-state execution FSM, hardware stack guard with a…
May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17
3D printing is such a fascinating field of technology, so a couple months ago, I decided to take a deep dive and learn how they actually work! This took me to one of my very first PCB projects, a small, cheap, 3D printer motherboard. While it's not the most cutting edge board, I learned a lot and I fully documented my process designing it (https://github.com/KaiPereira/Cheetah-MX4-Mini/blob/master/J...), so other people can learn from my mistakes! It runs off of an STM32H743 MCU, has 4 TMC stepsticks with UART/SPI configurations,…
Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18IB
We wanted to do something very challenging to prove to ourselves that we can do anything we put our mind to. The reasoning for why we chose to build a toy TPU specifically is fairly simple: - Building a chip for ML workloads seemed cool - There was no well-documented open source repo for an ML accelerator that performed both inference and training None of us have real professional experience in hardware design, which, in a way, made the TPU even more appealing since we weren't able to estimate exactly how difficult it would be. As we worked on the initial stages of this project, we…
2025 · tinytpu.com · its alternatives →
- 19AT
A 3.16M-parameter INT4 transformer running entirely in the on-chip memory of a Xilinx Kria KV260. Zero DRAM in the token loop, 59,965 tok/s on the fabric, bit-exact. Chat with it live.
Aug 2026 · mikeayles.com · its alternatives →
- 20
Turing Pi is a compact ARM cluster that provides a secure and scalable compute in the edge. It is designed to make web-scale edge computing easier for developers.
2020 · turingpi.com · its alternatives →
- 21
First Release is Here! I'm excited to announce the first release of i486SX_soft_FPU — a software FPU emulator for the classic Intel 486SX CPU, running on NetBSD 10! This project brings floating-point support back to life for 486SX machines, even though modern NetBSD versions no longer natively support processors without a hardware FPU. If you're into retrocomputing, operating system hacking, or just love old-school hardware, check it out! Project page: https://github.com/mezantrop/i486SX_soft_FPU Contributions, feedback, and testing are all very welcome! Let's keep these…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22AT
2015 · wiki.nesdev.com · its alternatives →
- 23
Made an ARM Thumb CPU from scratch in a digital circuit simulator for fun and decided to push the joke a little further and run real stuff on it, like a Web server, a Scheme interpreter, a MIDI player, and a VT100 emulator. This is basically a how-did-we-get-here blogpost, it's my second one of this kind, I'd love any feedback you might have.
2022 · zdimension.fr · its alternatives →
- 24
This project contains no code from Linux, BSD, Minix, or any other OS. Everything up until this point is written entirely from scratch, including a pure microkernel (that only implements multiprocessor priority scheduling, memory management, and interprocess communication), a work-in-progress implementation of the standard C library, and a variety of servers that provide drivers and other essential OS functionality. At the time of writing this post, the servers provide drivers for the keyboard, NVMe SSDs (that works on real hardware), a Unix-like virtual file system (with a single root…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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