I prefer RISCV as an starting assembly language because: it has good design, it's more intuitive, it has modern language and tool support (GCC, LLVM, Rust, etc.), and it runs on QEMU and real available hardware.
It's $8 and can't run without external ROM and RAM and a clock circuit and some glue logic.
A RISC-V CH32V003 32 bit processor with 2k RAM and 16k of flash running at 48 MHz costs $0.10 for an 8 pin package (6 available I/O pins) or $0.20 for the 20 pin package. Once programmed, it needs only electricity between 2.8V and 5.5V to be applied to start running.
The recommended dev board, with a USB programmer/debugger interface for your PC, plus 5 of the 20 pin chips, costs $8.35 about the same as a bare 65C02 chip.
For a "first dive" into a programming paradigm, I could see the appeal of something more "PC" shaped than "MCU shaped", just because it offers recognizable, easy ways to deal with primitive debugging.
If you have a memory-mapped frame buffer, you can write a single byte to it if you need a status checkpoint or tracking a variable. If you have a keyboard, you can probably read its buffer or use it for triggers.
Maybe modern debugging environments and tools make it easier, but I tend to think of my university assembly language class which featured original Intel SDK-86 boards with LEDs and hex keypads to interact with.
Yes I'm well aware. I have a 65C02 on a breadboard. I have a 6809 on a breadboard. I've seen all Ben's videos.
The *only* advantage the 6502 has is the exposed and non-multiplexed address and data busses, which you can single-step and examine with an Arduino or something.
The whole setup is going to cost you the thick end of $100.
But you can do that just as easily in an emulator.
And meanwhile with RISC-V you can get an ESP32-C3 board with 400k RAM for a dollar or two, or the 1 GHz 64 MB RAM 64 bit Linux Milk-V Duo for $5. And if you wish, run exactly the same programs on a $2500 64 core 128 GB RAM Pioneer. And bunches of $10, $30, $70, $100, $200 boards (and now $400 laptops) in between.
Only ARM gives you similar breadth, but the instruction sets of a Cortex-M0 and M4 Mac are so different they might as well be from different companies.
With an 8088 you could port DOS (which resembles CP/M-86) though games would require more memory and a video chip. But we've kind of left true 8-bit territory at this point.
> It's $8 and can't run without external ROM and RAM and a clock circuit and some glue logic.
True but I've always found that there was a special 'charm' to these old CPUs because you have to build the circuit you described as a bare minimum, which is not difficult and makes you learn a range of skills.
