Back in 1982, AcornSoft released a program designed to be a gentle introduction to understanding the internals of computer operation and 6502 assembly language. I found the original tape and manual a little over a year ago and it struck me that the sort of simplicity and clarity that the program brought to a fairly complex topic could still have a use today.

A couple of weeks ago I finally sat down and spent 8 hours or so on the task, and have come up with an HTML/JavaScript version, complete with a clone of the stunning 1980’s UI design (pictured above…) which not only executes the first two problems in the manual correctly, but has an extensible instruction set which allow experimentation and expansion of the original concept.

There’s lots left to do, not least of which is to continue with a more modern UI that is more touchscreen/mouse friendly than the keyboard driven affair of the original, so I have set up a public repo and mailing list along with a live demo:

Project: https://code.google.com/p/peeko-computer/

Mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/peeko-computer-general-discussion

Live demo: https://minimal.cx/PeekoComputer/

Do have a play around and join in with the coding, documentation or just bring up your ideas for discussion.