Building A 6502 In Minecraft

We’ll admit that we haven’t been following Minecraft like we used to; its been a while since we’ve seen something amazing in Minecraft, but [eloraam]’s 6502 emulator (part of her RedPower Minecraft mod) takes the cake.

The RedPower mod adds a lot of industrial technology to Minecraft. Pumps, solar panels, and pneumatic tubes to move blocks around are the staple of this mod, but with the addition of a fully emulated 6502 computer, Minecraft moves from an anachronistic medieval-themed steampunk aesthetic to a full-on machine age, mainframes everywhere style.

The heart of the 6502 portion of the RedPower mod are three craftable blocks; a CPU, a monitor, and a disk drive. All these blocks are connected together with ribbon cables and can interact with other blocks in the Minecraft universe. The CPU is an emulated 6502, with a few instructions borrowed from the 65816 and the addition of MUL and DIV. It’s possible to program this computer in assembly, but [eloraam] a Forth interpreter with the OS to make programming a little easier.

It’s been almost two years since we first saw the beginnings of a CPU made in Minecraft, but this mod takes everything to the next level. In actuality, this isn’t very different from the game [notch] is currently working on; both feature an emulated 80’s era computer that can do all your in-game bidding. We can’t imagine anything better to get us hooked on Minecraft again, and we’ve got to commend [eloraam] for some seriously awesome work.

After the break is a 23-minute tutorial on the functions of the RedPower CPU, as demonstrated by Minecraft aficionado [direwolf20].

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb0Q9htsbBI&w=470]

21 thoughts on “Building A 6502 In Minecraft

  1. I don’t get minecraft at all, but I still think it’s nice to see people that are fans have it, since they enjoy it so much.
    It’s odd since normally I’m not that empathic really.

    1. +1
      I also don’t understand why a 6502 sim placed in some cube moving environment is a hot new thing while same thing e.g. in a regular command line or in browser is not. But to each his own I guess.

      Yeah, the flipswitch panel is still cool.

  2. Very impressive mod, and my fav CPU!

    Whatnot: Don’t think of Minecraft as a game, think of it more like Lego. It’s just fun to build things and use imagination.

  3. Minecraft is awesome, as there is so much you can do with it… even un-modded (aka “vanilla”) But when one adds mods such as Redpower/Industrial Craft/etc. it even get more complex and more powerful… You can use Minecraft for many things,and some have real-world uses… For example Redstone in Minecraft, is similar to electricity in the RL, and with it one can learn about different logic gates and such.

  4. They have had similar things available for YEARS in a mod called craftbook. They have a block which is essentially an PLC running a language called perlstone.
    Features:
    A stack
    A 32-cell persistent variable table
    A 32-cell temporary variable table
    A 32-cell local variable table
    Three input registers

  5. Is anyone working on turning Minecraft into a *nix shell?

    Take the everything is a file philosophy and extend it so every file is a block. Then you can pipe commands together by sticking the blocks together.

    It would probably end up as the default shell in Ubuntu in a year or two.

      1. Well they say linux has no viruses (untrue, but not the point), With that, creepers might have a purpose. Not sure if it should be called “the microsoft experience” or “poor user emulation”

  6. “It’s possible to program this computer in assembly, but [eloraam] a Forth interpreter with the OS to make programming a little easier.”

    I think you accidentally a word.

  7. @daniel the colors used were to just show what would happen if you triggered the first, second or third one.. they weren’t there to actually represent something. he could’ve used a machine or anything, but a colored light was easiest I think.

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