6502 Driving Core Memory and Addressable LEDs?

This is a demo that I have not yet completed. I am gathering the information needed in case anyone else wants to hack into the interface on the Core64.

Driving the cores through the shift register shouldn’t be a problem, since timing requirements aren’t tight.

Reading the core sense wire is easy since the sense signal is in an RS Latch and can be processed any time.

Driving a monochrome Charlieplexed LED array shouldn’t be a timing challenge.

Driving individually addressable Neon Pixels should be possible - again, timing not a huge deal. This might be the ideal implementation because all of these fundamental components existed in the 70’s so this project could have been done back then. Using individually addressable Neon tubes is certainly a convenience I’m will to accept instead of building out all of the hardware (8 serial to parallel shift registers) to drive 64 of them.

Driving individually addressable RGB LEDs looks tricky, but it’s possible! Another example here.

I’d like this to be as authentic as possible by not including an intermediate MCU, but that is a convenient possibility. Technically, I think using 64 addressable LEDs is already the same as adding 64 MCUs!

Contact me if you’d like to help make this demo a reality. I welcome some collaboration on this demo!