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1 Year Anniversary of the CHIPS and Science Act: Celebrating the Legacy of the 6502 Microprocessor in Education

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 9, 2023 [Mesa, Arizona] – Today marks the 1-year anniversary of the CHIPS and Science Act (H.R.4346) signing, a momentous occasion that has opened doors to a new era of computing education. In the past year, the Act has brought together industry partners, colleges, and universities from around the world to […]

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Does ChatGPT know 6502 Assembly?

In this article, we’ll examine the extent to which ChatGPT, the state-of-the-art language model developed by OpenAI, can understand, interpret, and possibly even write in 6502 Assembly. Will the forward-looking AI grasp the programming dialect from yesteryears? Or will it stumble, revealing a chink in its linguistic armor?

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CHIPS Act Meets 6502 SOC Tapeout Classes

 August 12, 2022, Mesa, Arizona.  In planning and development for over a year the CHIPS Act is now meeting for the first time the plans and efforts by industry partners to create System On Chip (SOC) Design and Tapeout Classes for colleges and universities throughout the world. Beginning with the 180nm TSMC process node professors […]

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Announcing BD Electronics Ltd. as a new distribution partner

The Western Design Center, Inc. is pleased to announce BD Electronics Ltd. (BDE) as our newest distribution partner. BDE specializes in the rapid delivery of hard to find and obsolete Electronic Components to manufacturers across the globe in a wide variety of industries. This complements WDC’s long-standing 65xx microprocessor technology and maximizes a customer’s product […]

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In Memoriam of Charles “Chuck” Peddle

December 20, 2019 Mesa, Arizona It is with sadness WDC/I announce that on December 15, 2019, Chuck Peddle passed away. We send our heartfelt condolences to his family, friends and the personal computer industry. We have lost a pioneer with Chuck’s passing. Some history of Chuck’s and my relationship follows. I started work on Motorola’s […]

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The MENSCH™ Microcomputer

Company: The Western Design Center, Inc. Address: 2166 E. Brown Rd. Mesa, AZ 85213 Telephone: 480-962-4545 Fax: 480-835-6442 Email: David.Cramer@WesternDesignCenter.com   -For Immediate Release- (Hi Res Images Available on Request)   The MENSCH™ Microcomputer   MESA, AZ March, 2017-The MENSCH™ microcomputer W65C265QBX is a small single board computer (SBC), 1.25” x 2.25”, using the System on […]

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W65C265SXB-Tape Data Recorder

Introduction Here’s another old project that I decided to redo to see if I could do better. Back in the days when the Commodore 64 and Atari 400’s first came out, most home computers would store and retrieve data from standard audio cassette tapes. Lucky for me, my C64 had a floppy disk drive so […]

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W65C265SXB- Music Player

Project by: Mike Kohn Music Player The W65C265 chip has 2 tone generators built in, so I decided for a second project to play some music. The tone generators, unlike toggling an I/O pin with a timer, generates a sine wave. Since this project is pretty similar to my previous SN76489 MIDI player I ended […]

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W65C265SXB- Software SPI

Software SPI Note: The following is a repost from Mike Kohn on one of his projects with the W65C265SXB.  He also made Java Grinder, which works with the 6502/65816. There are at least two famous robots that run on 6502: Futurama’s Bender and The Terminator. I thought it might be fun to write some 6502 […]

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W65C134SXB- Terminal Python

Introduction: Simple Terminal interface written in Python. There is one script that works for both the W65C134SXB and W65C265SXB. This is meant to give a simple interface that the user can customize for their needs. This makes the terminal interface much nicer than the default HyperTerm style terminal. Github: https://github.com/WesternDesignCenter/TerminalPython

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