newbie building a scratch-built computer

I think the first thing for you to do is to work out what you want to do, or what you want the computer to do. A few thoughts. 1) Do you want to make a clone of one of the well-known early-ish micros? 2) Do you even want to make a microcomputer at all, or would you like to make your own process for gates and flip-flops (it doesn't that _that_ many chip,s I think it can be done in under 100 TTL packages)? 3) Do you want to run commeraical (of 30 years ago :-)) software, or will you be happy with a mcachine code monitor and entering your own little programs on toggle switchss or a hex keypad? Others have mentioned the need for a good soldering iron. I'll go along with that (I use an old Weller). But actually, the good ireon is more important for taking things off the PCB (when you make a mistake) without damaging the PCB. In general you can solder the PCB with just about any iron. What about test equipment? Particularly if you design your own machine, or work from just a shcematic, it is _not_ going to work properly first time (that is the voice of experience, I can assure you). You will have to debug it. Now I debugged my first homebrew computer (Z80 based) using nothing more than an analogue multimeter (VOM) and an LED+resistor to look at logic states. I don't recomend it!. A 'scope is very useful, so is a logic analyser. One final point. Much has been said in the past about unreliabiltiy caused by IC sockets. This may well be an issue for commercial boards, but for homebrew prototypes (as you are considering building), I would recomend using turned=pin DIL sockets for _everything_ unless there's a good electrical reason (stray capacistance or inductance, for example) for not doing. Having ICs in sockets makes debugging a lot easier. -tony