2 Nov
2005
2 Nov
'05
11:16 a.m.
der Mouse wrote:
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 had to do something similar in our hardware design course. We had a
choice. We could actually etch boards and solder sockets, breadboard it
or simulate it. We had sixteen banks of sixteen locations, four bits
each. And we didn't have branch instructions. Only relative jumps.
Most (all but 5?) students simulated it. I breadboarded. (I hadn't yet
learned soldering then.) One guy soldered it. Probably made a pretty
good souvenir.
Peace... Sridhar
I guess nobody even considers building a computer from
scratch. :(
[...]
Wasn't there an article a looong time ago about a fellow who built
his own CPU from TTL parts in BYTE or Microcomputing?