6502

The 6502 CPU

The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Chuck Peddle for MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced it was the least expensive full featured CPU on the market by far, at about 1/6th the price, or less, of competing designs from larger companies such as Motorola and Intel. It was nevertheless faster than most of them, and, along with the Zilog Z80, sparked off a series of computer projects that would eventually result in the home computer revolution of the 1980s. The 6502 design was originally second-sourced by Rockwell and Synertek and later licensed to a number of companies; it is still made for embedded systems.

Originally the CPC was destined to be designed around the 6502 processor. But when Amstrad approached Locomotive Software to develop a Basic for it with a very tight deadline, Locomotive PLC, who already had a Z80 Basic in the works, urged and convinced Amstrad to switch to the Z80.

The 6502 microprocessor is an 8-bit CPU with an 8-bit ALU and a 16-bit address bus capable of direct access to 64KB of memory space. Like the Z80, the 6502 is also a little-endian CPU, meaning it stores 16-bit values with the least significant byte first, followed by the most significant byte. The 6502 has 151 instructions, which are composed of 56 distinct opcodes across various addressing modes.

Although it lacks the raw processing power of processors like the Intel 80x86 or the Motorola 68000 series, the 6502 was known for its efficiency and affordability, making it a popular choice for embedded systems and early home computers. Its simple design contributed to lower manufacturing costs and simplified integration.

The 6502 chip is made up of 4528 transistors (3510 enhancement transistors and 1018 depletion pullup transistors). It comes in a 40-pin DIP package. It has been produced by various manufacturers and used in a wide range of applications, from early gaming consoles like the Atari VCS and Nintendo Entertainment System to personal computers like the Apple II and Commodore 64.

The address space that the 6502 uses is split into pages. There are 256 pages and each page is 256 bytes in size, ranging from page 0 to page 255.

In order to make up for the lack of registers, the 6502 includes a zero page addressing mode ($0000-$00FF) that uses only 1 address byte in the instruction instead of the 2 that are needed to address the full 64 KB of memory. This provides fast access to the first 256 bytes of RAM by using shorter instructions.

The stack is permanently located in page 1 ($0100-$01FF) and managed by the 8-bit stack pointer (S), with an initial value of $FF. It grows downward as data is pushed onto the stack. The stack has a 256-byte limit, and overflow occurs if not managed properly.

Instructions PHA and PHP push the accumulator and processor status onto the stack, while PLA and PLP pull them back. Subroutine calls with JSR store the return address on the stack, and RTS retrieves it to continue execution. Similarly, interrupts (BRK) push the program counter and status, while RTI restores them.

All I/O operations are memory-mapped. There are no port-based I/O instructions.

BRK / IRQ / NMI / RESET

On a RESET, the CPU loads the vector from $FFFC/$FFFD into the program counter and continues fetching instructions from there.

On an NMI, the CPU pushes the low byte and the high byte of the program counter as well as the processor status onto the stack, disables interrupts and loads the vector from $FFFA/$FFFB into the program counter and continues fetching instructions from there.

On an IRQ, the CPU does the same as in the NMI case, but uses the vector at $FFFE/$FFFF.

On a BRK instruction, the CPU does the same as in the IRQ case, but sets bit #4 (B flag) in the copy of the status register that is saved on the stack.

Half Cycles

The 6502 divides each clock cycle into two phases (ϕ1 and ϕ2):

• During the ϕ1 half-cycle, no bus access occurs. This phase is dedicated to internal CPU operations.
• During the ϕ2 half-cycle, if needed, the CPU accesses the external bus for memory reads/writes or I/O operations.

The use of half-cycles ensures that memory and I/O devices have predictable timing windows when the CPU will access the bus, while still allowing the CPU to perform internal operations in parallel.

Standard instructions

Cycles are shown in parenthesis for each opcode. p=1 if page is crossed. t=1 if branch is taken.

Illegal instructions

The opcodes in bold are unstable. Only 2 of those 7 opcodes ($8B, $AB) are actually unstable in the sense that they may produce a truly unpredictable result. The other 5 opcodes actually produce predictable results – but the conditions under which they do that and the produced results are a bit unexpected.

• The simultaneous assertion of a hardware interrupt line and execution of BRK was not accounted for in the design — the BRK instruction will be ignored in such a case.

• Conditional jumps are only 8-bit relative. And unconditional jumps are only 16-bit absolute.

• Some instructions, particularly those involving branches or indexed addressing modes, incur an extra cycle if the processor has to cross a memory page boundary. This is problematic for time-sensitive code.

• The NOP instruction takes 2 full-cycles. This is the minimum amount of cycles an instruction can take.

• 6502 at the English-language Wikipedia
• 6502 Instruction Set
• 6502 Family CPU Reference
• Media:SY6500 - SY65C02 datasheet.pdf
• Media:6502 (65xx) Microprocessor Instant Reference Card.pdf
• No more secrets - NMOS 6510 Unintended Opcodes