3ric — The Story

Chapter 1 · Where it started

It started with an Atari 1200XL

I grew up with an Atari 1200XL and a fascination with computers in general — how does a box of silicon turn switches into games? Years later I wanted a real answer instead of a hand-wavy one, so I went back to the 8-bit era and started with the 6502 — the same CPU behind the Apple II, the Commodore 64, and the NES. No blueprint, no fixed destination — just a Ben-Eater-shaped urge to understand a computer by building one from nothing. First and foremost, this was a learning journey.

Chapter 2 · A goal takes shape

A first machine — and a target: Lode Runner

The first working machine was the EB6502. I bolted on a bit-banged micro-SD card, wrote a tiny DOS for it, and started porting games — Chess, Breakout, Gomoku — just to prove the thing could play. That’s when the learning project grew a mission: get the games I actually loved running on hardware I built myself, starting with Lode Runner. Chasing that one game would end up dictating almost every design decision that followed — and put an even bigger challenge, Ultima IV, on the horizon.

Chapter 3 · The twist

To run Lode Runner, I had to speak Apple II

Here’s the plot twist: to run the games I was after, my machine had to behave like an Apple II — and that was a deliberate choice. Of that whole generation, the Apple II had the simplest graphics hardware you can still build from off-the-shelf parts today, so chasing Lode Runner steered almost every design decision toward Apple II compatibility. But 3RIC is no clone — the schematic is an original design that doesn’t look like an Apple II at all. It just gets close enough in behavior to run a surprising amount of Apple II software.

The graphics system is the part I’m proudest of. On 3RIC the video is generated entirely in hardware, out to a clean modern VGA signal. The Apple II’s famous hi-res color was a gorgeous hack — it fell out of color-burst artifacts on the NTSC signal — so to get that same color on VGA I reproduced the artifact behavior in logic circuits I designed myself. And because the CPU and the video hardware share the same RAM, the whole thing only works with exact timing: the two have to take turns on the bus so they never collide. Getting that dance right is the engineering I’m most proud of.

And make no mistake — 3RIC is its own machine. It takes a PS/2 keyboard and mouse, SNES controllers, and an SD card — none of which the Apple II had — so its ROM is significantly different, and there’s no Applesoft BASIC. That originality is half the fun, and it’s also why not everything runs: some titles lean on Apple II internals that 3RIC simply does its own way. A machine this original deserves its own name — so the ebadger6502 became 3RIC.

“A new computer deserves a new name — from now on ebadger6502 is the 3RIC 6502.” — my 6502.org project thread

Chapter 4 · Making it a real computer

Disks, joysticks, demos & music

A computer isn’t fun until it’s playable. 3RIC got Apple II disk emulation, joysticks hacked out of a SNES gamepad, a run of deater’s jaw-dropping Mode 7 demo, and even a Petscii Robots intro screen with Mockingboard music. Bit by bit it stopped being a project and started being a machine.

Chapter 5 · From wires to a board

Breadboards → PCB

A wall of jumper wires can only take you so far. The scariest, most satisfying step was turning the rat’s nest into a real printed circuit board — committing the design to copper, ordering it, and hoping it powers on. (Spoiler: it took a couple of tries. It always does.)

Chapter 6 · The payoff

Lode Runner ran. Then I set my sights on Ultima IV.

And then it happened: Lode Runner ran on the machine I built — the exact goal that had started the whole redesign. So I aimed higher and went after Ultima IV, a full Apple II RPG, end to end — and finished it on 3RIC. With the hard problems solved, a whole lot of other games fell into place too. I’d blown right past the plan I started with.

Honestly, the whole project was a lesson in faith. When I set out to run Lode Runner I had no idea how I’d get there — it felt outside what I was capable of. I did it anyway, and far exceeded my own expectations.

Chapter 7 · Not just one machine

The wider hardware-hacking universe

3RIC is the headline, but it lives in a bigger tinkering habit. There’s the Badger6502 Pico — a DIY kit and a Raspberry Pi Pico running a 6502 emulator, complete with a 3D-printed case — the endless Lode Runner saga that hops between an Apple II, the Pico, and 3RIC, and detours into ESP32, the Atari 2600, and the XAC controller adapter. Same curiosity, different silicon.

That’s the highlight reel — the full run of build logs, shorts, and deep dives lives on the 3RIC build series and my YouTube channel.

Chapter 8 · Your turn

Now the whole machine runs in your browser

Here’s the twist ending: alongside the real hardware I built a cycle-honest C++ emulator of 3RIC and compiled it to WebAssembly, so the exact same core that models the chips boots the real 512 KB ROM in any browser — no install, no account. Click the screen and type at the monitor prompt, boot a disk, or open the built-in 65C02 assembler and write a program that runs on the machine instantly.

And here’s my favorite part for tinkerers: it doubles as an Apple II dev kit. Write and assemble a program in the browser, get it running, then hit Download .woz — you get a bootable 5.25″ disk image, generated entirely client-side, that boots not just on 3RIC but on a real Apple II. Build a game here; run it on real hardware.

Community · In real time

The whole thing, posted from the workbench

Almost none of this happened in private. From the very first breadboard I shared the build on r/beneater and the wider maker community — the wins, the dead ends, and the “wait, that actually worked?” moments. Here’s the five-year journey the way it went out, one post at a time.

1. Sep 2020
   How fast can you run your breadboard 65C02?

   Day one on the breadboard, and my first question to the community. Mine topped out at 6 MHz.

2. Oct 2020
   Text-mode VGA adapter — hardware and simulator demo

   I introduced myself and the mission: an Atari kid inspired by Ben Eater, with “an irrational notion of porting Lode Runner” to a machine I’d built myself.

3. Nov 2020
   VGA card + CPU, take two, with keyboard

   My homemade VGA card driving a display with a PS/2 keyboard attached — 90 upvotes and a lot of encouragement to keep going.

4. Jan 2022
   My 6502 PCB, populated and working!

   Breadboards became a real circuit board: my first 6502 PCB, populated and booting.

5. Jan 2022
   VGA requirements — ideas?

   I said the goal out loud — “My goal is to get the game Lode Runner working” — and started designing the graphics to earn it.

6. Mar 2022
   Lode Runner running on my Eater-based 6502 emulator

   First contact: the game I’d been chasing for a year, running on my emulator.

7. Mar 2022
   Lode Runner stable at 300 KHz

   …then on the real hardware — stable, if only at 300 KHz to start. Back to the drawing board on the VGA circuit.

8. Jul 2022
   My emulator and a real Apple II, side by side

   My homebrew machine and a genuine Apple II, running Lode Runner right next to each other.

9. Jul 2022
   Tom’s Hardware wrote an article about the project!

   The Pi Pico + Lode Runner build got written up. People were watching now.

10. Aug 2022
    Adventures with ESP32, Atari 2600 and the XAC

    A detour with heart: I made the Xbox Adaptive Controller stand in for an Atari joystick, so these games could be played hands-free.

11. Oct 2022
    Ported a Z-machine to a Raspberry Pi Pico

    Zork on a $4 Pico that boots in about a second — a whole shelf of text adventures crammed into 2 MB. 110 upvotes.

12. Feb 2023
    Lode Runner anyone?

    The build hit r/retrobattlestations and climbed to 123 points.

13. Aug 2023
    Ultima IV on a 6502: bringing a classic RPG to life

    The next mountain: getting Ultima IV, a full Apple II RPG, running on my machine.

14. Oct 2023
    3RIC 6502 — am I building an Apple II?

    The question that gave the computer its name and its identity.

15. Dec 2024
    Finished Ultima IV on my homebrew computer

    Four years in: Ultima IV, played through to the end on a machine I built from chips.

16. Mar 2025
    3RIC — the conclusion

    “I’m wrapping up my 3RIC project. What a ride.”

Community · Follow along

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