The BBC 6502 was made exclusively for Acorn machines produced in collaboration with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), a famous British television channel and broadcaster. The 6502 was intended ofr use with Acorn's Micro and Master models. This accessory was released in early 1984. After its production ceased; the device's casing, which was loved dearly by Acorn enhousiasts and was known as the 'cheese wedge', was reused for later similar systems. The casing was also repurposed for the Prestel and Teletext adapters.

According to some experts, the 6502 Second Processor itself is a computer system, due to the fact that this BBC machine is being used as a host machine for both input and output. The core of the device is the 3 MHz 6502 processor (which the system is named after) and 64 KB integral memory. The machine is connected via a short ribbon cable to the bus port, located on the bottom of the BBC Micro. The BBC 6502 was delivered with Acorn DNFS and Hi-BASIC ROMs.