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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 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 code for part of one of these robots, so I downloaded a sound sample of The Terminator and loaded it on this chip along with some code […]

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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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W65C816SXB- Hacker

Introduction: A tool for modifying the firmware on your WDC W65C816SXB Development Board The SXB development board has a 128K Flash ROM that can be updated under software control. The design of the SXB board divides the ROM into four 32K banks and maps one these into the memory area between $00:8000 and $00:FFFF. On […]

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W65C816SXB- Game of Life

I managed to get it to play Game of life on my old 24×24 LED display… The LED display is controlled by 9 MAX7219 LED controllers that is interfaced using the VIA. The shift register in the VIA is used rather than bit banging the data with IO ports, this allows for a better shift […]

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