Old 6809 computer lives on breadboards

Among older processors, the 6809 has never garnered as much attention as some of its cousins. The Radio Shack CoCo used it as well as an article on the construction in Wireless World Magazine. Now [Dave] has rebuilt this computer on breadboards and it looks great. The files are on GitHub and there is even a series of videos on the machine. You can watch the first one below.

You can even read the original Wireless World articles from January 1981 where the board used a 6802. The upgrade to a 6809 appears in the July 1981 issue. The magazine promised you could build the system for 100 £. Besides the 6809, there were only a few chips. A PROM, two RAM chips, a 6821 PIA and a 74LS138 decoder for address selection. An array of MC1413 transistors also enabled a 7-segment display and a keyboard with a 7442 BCD decoder.

Apparently [Dave] had started a similar computer back in the 80's and made modifications to it to fit the Wireless World project memory card. Looks like he didn't finish it, but he found the old boards and decided to recreate it on a model.

Like many computers of the time, the machine had a cassette interface. We really like the aesthetics of the 7 segment LEDs and the overall look of the build.

The 6809 has been used in some specific industrial and video game applications. There was also a New Zealand educational computer based on the 6809, as well as a few other personal computers like the SuperPET and the Dragon.