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You could always just build a cpu from scratch? http://www.homebrewcpu.com/

Coincidentally I have been running through this course in my spare time and I have to say it is the best I have found in 10 years. I've been itching to build a homebrew cpu like http://www.homebrewcpu.com/ but lacked the basic skills to design a proper ALU and such. Most other courses either start way too basic and then shoot too far forward or they gloss over the basics and go right in to advanced concepts. So far I have made it through Chapter 2 and I'm proud to say that I've built all the basic components in HDL without looking anything up outside of the course material. Being able to build complex components on top of basic components I built myself is very rewarding. This is a must take course if you want a more intimate understanding of how computers work. And if building a computer from basic gates isn't nerdy enough for you, build your own transistors.

If need be, we will reboot the revolution by hand-soldering logic circuits out of regular transistors.

Good luck getting such circuits to communicate over any public network.

Does the internet count? ;) "Magic-1 is a completely homebuilt minicomputer. It doesn't use an off-the-shelf microprocessor, but instead has a custom CPU made out of 74 Series TTL chips. Altogether there are more than 200 chips in Magic-1 connected together with thousands of individually wrapped wires. And, it works. Not only the hardware, but a full software stack. There's a ANSI C cross-compiler for Magic-1 (retargeted LCC), a fully multi-user, multi-tasking port of the Minix 2 operating system. a TCP/IP stack and hundreds of programs." MAGIC-1 http://www.homebrewcpu.com/

Err, I may have confused this with another story - from here. If I have, sorry.

Neverthless, it seems this story is, however, not unique even in the modern day.

Reminds me of the one my brother built here except my brother's computer runs Minux.

How come nobody's done a hobby home brew CPU using tubes and core memory?

lovingly hand-crafted from the finest vintage 74LS stock available

The ??AA can suck it, too!

AFAIK, this is the only CPU still made in America.

Magic-1, a 16-bit TTL-based, wire-wrap PCB computer.

Slashdot posted an article on Magic-1 when it was completed years ago as well.

Nobody can design and create a new CPU, operating system and a set of graphical dev tools in their spare time.

Maybe you underestimate the human spirit?

I rember reading about how this stuff would happen back in 1995 when I first heard about paladium (fore runner to "trusted" computing). At the time my attitude was nah never... but now graphics cards are activly marketed on their DRM support (HDCP)and MS wants to rent you an OS. I do hope slashdot is able to build there own computers? anyway here are some links with scematics and such like you may want to save to your hard disks before all non TPM hardware is outlawed: http://www.zxdesign.info/indexPage.shtml http://www.hanssummers.com/computers/newz80/index.htm http://www.homebrewcpu.com/ btw does anyone have the specifications for PCI? as you apear to have to pay a huge huge sum of money to get them and be connected to the right people.

Memory chips are visible in this picture and are a set of 8 HM628512(A/B)LP chips.

according to his other site

way to burst his computer into flames...

Check this project out: http://www.homebrewcpu.com/

Now THATS intimidating. Friggin awesome and insane.

why would you do something silly like that. Do it the good old fashioned way and just use a whole stack of logic gates. http://www.homebrewcpu.com/. Then have a webserver running on it.!

If you think that's cool, check this out. A homebrew CPU made out of 74 series TTL chips. You can even telnet to it if it's not too busy :-) There are some other ones out there, but this is the one I enjoy looking at the most.

Check out the guy at http://homebrewcpu.com/. He's still working on his, some 5 years and counting :). Serously though, the software side of his project wasn't the most time consuming, it would seem.

Replace all that TTL with a few higher speed FPGAs or whatever's current, and you might have the basis for a usable computer.

Sorry, but wire-wrap won't support modern bus speeds. (It might be possible to underclock things slow enough to get away with WW, I don't know. This'll get you started... Recently discussed here.

He made his own CPU with TTLs ... used a port of Adam Dunkels' uIP TCP/IP stack... and made the homepage http://www.homebrewcpu.com/ with MS FRONTPAGE!!! Doh!

homebrewcpu.com

Chuck Dickman's cool hardware projects including a QBus-ATA adapter

Peter McCollum has just finished a great hack involving a PDP-11 microprocessor (T-11).

If you want to go really hardcore, check out homebrewcpu.com. That guy basically made a processor out of TTL components. I was actually searching google about this very same thing the other day and came across that site(although not much else other than old homebrew computer clubs).

I came into this late, so not many /.'ers will see this.

Here is a site I've been watching for a couple of months. This guy is building his own mini-computer using TTL chips.