FPGA VAX update

I dunno about that, but I once did just that. I took a digital hardware design course, and as a term project I breadboarded a little 4-bit computer. (I think the whole class did likewise, but it was long enough ago that memory is fuzzy.) Only 16 words of memory, and 4-bit words at that, with 4-bit opcodes - not a terribly powerful machine, but an extremely instructive one to build. All TTL; the most complicated building block was a 4-bit ALU chip, a 74181 I think. We also used what were easily the nicest breadboards I've ever used. Real sockets for the chips, with socket pins brought out to jacks that were basically miniature banana plug sockets; the wire connectors were matching miniature banana plugs, and in particular were stackable the way banana plugs are. All the connectors were gold-plated. The bench unit the thing plugged into provided power, clock (frequency settable bank of maybe 16 switches and 16 LEDs...a really pretty setup that was a positive joy to use. Never seen anything nearly so nice since. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B