3 Nov
2005
3 Nov
'05
11:33 a.m.
Holger Veit wrote:
Somewhat OT, but anyway...
One of my other interests (it has been for much longer than I've been
interested in computers) it horology -- clocks, etc.
One day I will make a mechanical clock from scratch, probably to my own
design. It will, I know, be a poor timekeeper. A $5 quartz clock will be
a lot better. But there is a certain joy in actually making it oneself.
Others certainly feel likewise, there are a number of people who make
mechanical clocks, there are plenty of books on the subject.
I feel the same way about desgining and making a processor. Do it for fun.
You are not going to make a faster Pentium at home. Period. You might well
make something with a strange architecture or instruction set. You _will_
learn a heck of a lot by doing it, though.
-tony
[... lot before ... ]
When Hillary climbed the Mount Everest 50 years
ago, it was something
new, extraordinary. When tourist nowadays use sort of stairways to reach
the top (okay, it's not *that* extreme now), it is just uninteresting.
But standing on the top, is still a challenge and an experience for the
individual. However, what we lost now is a sense of wonder - that small
ALU based TTL circuit was built by myself, and I did it, and it is
irrelevant that some idiot could download a digital simulator and click
the same circuit together on a PC screen. I guess this is what makes the
difference between a real PDP-11 with some ridiculous 5MB storage disks
compared to a SIMH emulator running on a 3GHz Pentium.
Watch the blinkenlights.
Well said !!!