BUILDING RAM into VERONICA – THE 6502 computer

It seems unusual that RAM is being added to a computer so late in the build, but [Quinn Dunki] should have had it in the back of her mind the whole time because it turns out to be a rather painless experience. For those of you keeping score, this makes her Veronica project Turing complete.

The brightly colored rats nest imagined above connects the new components to the 6502 computer backplane seen in the upper left. [Quinn] chose to choose two 32K SRAM modules which need very little in the way of drive hardware (it’s hanging out on the breadboard to the left). The RAM module will simply listen for its address and react accordingly. There is one hitch concerning a two-phase clock and the need to safeguard the RAM from erroneous data during the first of those phases.

Getting this all to work actually pointed out a bug in the ROM module she had long ago completed. After picking up on the problem she was able to appropriate it simply by cutting traces and soldering in jumper wires.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *