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processor memory via acia
The Amélie project
Components
Amélie consists of a number of hardware components, the parts can be seen in the picture on the right.

Part of Amélie's design is "keep it simple", so only the minimum required is used. There is nothing "fancy", as a system capable of rendering 3D images in real-time may look good on paper, but it won't run your heating any better, nor will it make a better burglar alarm.
What works is to keep it simple, keep it effective, and do exactly what is required with the minimum of fuss and bother.
 Amélie's component parts.

The component parts of Amélie are:

    • The processor
      A 6502 clocked at 2MHz.

    • The "memory"
      2K of static RAM, 4K of EPROM, and memory-mapped I/O devices.

    • The digital I/O
      A 6522 VIA, offering 16 digital I/O lines and two timers.

    • The serial I/O
      A 6551 ACIA, running at 2400bps 8N1, for communication with the "outside world".

 

A component that does not have it's own document is the latch. Mapped in at &A300, this device appears as a single byte in the memory map. The value written to this byte is held until the next time it is updated (or 'latched', hence the name). The lower four bits represent LEDs - bit 0 is red, bits 1 and 2 are yellow, bit 3 is a green LED. The upper four bits are unused.

 

You will also find the memory map useful to look at, along with the schematic (which may be found in the downloads section).

© 2005 Rick Murray