Neo6502 the EUR 30 W65C02 based Open Source Hardware modern Retro Computer with HDMI, USB Keyboard interface got it’s own BASIC language made by Paul Robson – the man behind a lot of 6502 projects on the net!
For a long time Neo6502 users could only play Apple ][ and Oric-Atoms games running in emulation mode, but the original NeoBasic written by Paul Robson specially for Neo6502 becomes more and more useful with every day.
Paul Robson not only have excellent ideas, but also it quite well organized and documents well what he is doing. You can check the documentation for the BASIC language , the Neo6502 API, Memory Map, etc. something which is mostly skipped in other projects as being “boring stuff”.
Although W65C02 in Neo6502 runs on only humble 6.25 Mhz this brief comparison show that the “magic” Paul Robson does to offload 6502 with activities where the processor is not good at to RP2040 gives great results. For instance Multiplication, Division, Float Point Arithmetic, Moving Sprites, loading graphics is all delegated to RP2040. The major advantage for Neo6502 architecture toward the others is that all the RAM is inside RP2040 and the SD-CARD/USB Flash drives are also directly accessible by RP2040, so 6502 only have to “give commands” to RP2040 and not move any data to it. This makes the Neo6502 very efficient.
Here is comparison of Neo6502 and some other Retro Computers:
As you can see Neo6502 at 6.25Mhz is right behind Acorn A3010 (ARM250@12Mhz) and AgonLight (Z80@18.434Mhz) outperforming CommanderX16 which runs on 8Mhz and have FPGA co-processor.
Compared to the old Retro Machines from the ’80s like Acorn BBC B, Commodore 64 and even HP with 68000@8Mhz Neo6502 just outperform them x10-20 times!
To see how efficient NeoBasic has become just see the Galaxians written in NeoBASIC in just 134 Lines of code:
Comparing new 6502 machine with Commander X16 is unavoidable as this is probably most popular 6502 project on the net. Here is LINE DRAW BASIC demo made on Commander X16 and on Neo6502:
If you want to join the development you can join the Neo6502 Discord developer’s chat server
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