Pocket265 Is a Modern 6502-Equipped Pocket Computer

People develop an interest in retrocomputing for many different reasons. For some, it is about collecting mint-condition vintage hardware. For others, it is about using original hardware to get the best retrogaming experience. But for a certain subset of the retrocomputing community, the allure comes from reliving the low-level experience of early computing. For those people, original hardware isn’t always necessary and they might enjoy using this modern 6502-equiped pocket computer called Pocket265.

The MOS Technology 6502 is arguably the most iconic processor of all time — right up there with the Zilog Z80. The 6502 is an 8-bit processor first introduced in 1975. It could run at clock rates running from 1MHz to 3MHz and was used in many popular computers and video game consoles, like the Apple II, Commodore 64, BBC Micro, NES, and Atari 2600. Without something in ROM to boot to, like the BASIC environments that were common in the 8-bit era, working with a 6502 processor meant utilizing low-level operations to move data in and out of memory registers. That is the experience that the Pocket265 delivers.

Pocket265 is a PCB about the size of a modern smartphone. The most expensive components for this project are the DL1414 bubble-style LED 16-segment displays. The BoM calls for three of these displays and each of them contains four digits, for a total of 12 digits. Because those are so pricey, there is an option to use a cheap 8x2 character LCD instead (though that isn’t yet supported in firmware). Aside from those displays, the PCB contains 24 tactile push buttons, three LED indicators, the 6502 processor in a socket, an 8KB ROM chip, an 8KB RAM chip, and supporting components. It also supports I2C EEPROM memory up to 64KB, even if using that wouldn’t be period-accurate.

The standard enclosure is a very simple 3D-printed frame, but users can design their own more elaborate enclosures. Power comes from a LiPo battery and the aforementioned LEDs indicate its status. An expansion slot allows for add-ons that users might want to develop.

Pocket265 is a DIY, open source project and it doesn’t really do anything on its own — it is just the computer hardware. But with the keyboard and display, users can enter their own machine code. From there, they can build software and layers of abstraction. That is not a trivial thing, but it is how early developers started to create the computing environments we know today.