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Alien Probes

A board series to help debug hardware at the lowest level

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This board series include a STM32F405 microcontroler connected to a computer via a CH340G serial to USB chip. The probe is connected in place of the target CPU with a special connector. The project is flagged as completed, as the hardware is now working. However, support for other CPUs may be added in the future, and firmware is still work in progress.

The MCU that I use for this series of boards is a STM32F405VGT6. It has ample room for controlling bits, and it can also run a software emulator for most of the 8-bit CPUs out there. The STM can support DMA and interrupts.

Supported CPUs so far:

Z80, Z8001, 8088, PC-XT, Generic, 6502, 6510, 6809

All these provide test features:

1) Bit control and probe to test for short, continuity, and other basic malfunction

2) Bus transaction to test peripheral (helps tame periferals to peripherals!)

3) Memory editing, IO manipulations

4) (Z80 for now) Emulation, stepping and register manipulation

IMG_20260817_050123101.jpg

Assembled Alien Probes: 6502, 6510, 6809

JPEG Image - 997.38 kB - 08/17/2026 at 09:03

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6809.png

New Alien Probe for 6809

Portable Network Graphics (PNG) - 119.68 kB - 07/23/2026 at 17:56

Preview

6510.png

New Alien Probe for 6510

Portable Network Graphics (PNG) - 122.45 kB - 07/23/2026 at 17:55

Preview

6502.png

New Alien Probe for 6502

Portable Network Graphics (PNG) - 114.07 kB - 07/23/2026 at 17:54

Preview

6510-kicad.tar.bz2

6510 Alien Probe

x-bzip2 - 643.46 kB - 07/16/2026 at 05:16

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