Robin from 8-Bit Show and Tell celebrates 50 Years of 6502. He offers a sharp and fun tour of the processor that reshaped home computing. The MOS 6502 arrived in September 1975 at a bargain price. Former Motorola engineers built it to be affordable and fast enough for real work. The result ran the Commodore 64, Apple II, Atari 2600, and the NES. It invited millions to try coding.
Robin frames the story with a ranked list of the top 50 instructions used in the Commodore 64 ROM. He counts real occurrences, then explains each mnemonic with humor and clear examples. LDA firmly tops the chart. STA lands close behind, clearly. Branch favorites like BEQ and BNE show how simple tests drive complex behavior. Then he highlights oddballs. CLV barely shows in the C64 ROM. The 1541 drive uses it when an overflow pin signals a byte is ready.
Next, he compares instructions that rotate, shift, and mask bits. ROR, ROL, ASL, and LSR get practical treatment, not folklore. EOR toggles flags. AND masks values. ORA flips bits on purpose. The logic feels like LEGO for bytes. Meanwhile, store and load instructions keep the machine moving. He grounds it in code that shipped in millions of machines. 50 Years of 6502 still echoes in every demo and loader.
The history lesson lands, too. Chuck Peddle’s team pushed for low cost over luxury. That choice opened doors for students, hobbyists, and future engineers. Variants like the 6510 and 65816 carried the design into new eras, from the VIC-20 to the Super Nintendo. The takeaway is simple. The chip mattered since people used it. And they used it a lot. The video captures that spirit with data, screenshots, and playful teaching. 50 Years of 6502 earns a spot on every retro playlist.
