ZIFs are on our test board for our breadboards kit schematics – they are used (as you have mentioned) to insert/remove chips for testing. And fast check of ROM firmware for it's updates.
So we've built a test PCB board to test fast our chips and schematics.
No, we use ATMegas for Keyboard and Video. About gaming and serial terminal – we had an idea to make it possible to have some pixel graphics run by our Apple-1 - e.g. to use ASCII codes above 127 as commands to video driver to set pixels or lines. Similar to how VGA registers work. So it still will be a kind of serial terminal, but it could draw graphics (TFT screen basically uses also serial connection via SPI).
Yes, you are right – controllers are made on ATmega328PU chips so drivers could be easily modified and uploaded to the chips via FTDI cable. E.g. you could change color of the screen
Thanks!) But it’s not emulated - it uses microcontrollers for keyboard&video and original CPU 6502 with ROM/RAM to do the work.
Original Steve Wozniak’s code is on ROM. ROM chip is bigger then in the original and it’s possible to load BASIC interpreter or other programs and run them from ROM
Yep, I use ATmega just as video and keyboard controllers. All real work is done by 6502 - it communicates with memory and keyboard and video controllers. Just as in the original Apple I