Building Your Own Digital Device?

Posted by Cliff on Thursday November 29, 2001 @07:35AM from the starting-from-the-ground-and-building-up dept.

Skaven04 asks: "After finishing up my Digital Design class this semester I've suddenly got the urge to build something really cool. I'm leaning toward a processor/pda/calculator thingamajig. Not really a processor, considering that it wouldn't be following any set standards, like x86, but basically a machine that I can program with my own assembly language, have keyboard input, and (most likely) an LCD output (like on your TI85 or whatever). What I'm seeing in my head right now is an 8-bit design with an ALU (like the 74LS181) as the centerpiece and naturally a few 64K RAMs and various registers, counters, etc. as necessary to implement my command set. Has anybody else out there ever undertaken this kind of project? What are some sites I could visit to get a good outline of the best way to approach it? What are some good places to get the parts cheap? Any suggestions on displays? Links to similar projects?"

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Re:Have fun! by stienman · 2001-11-29 13:07 · Score: 3, Informative

You can get that LCD from jameco, 128x64 Graphics LCD

The current ratings on the web site are wrong, check out the data sheet first. Very low power.

As far as designing your own chip, the only suggestion I'd have is to pay very careful attention to power consumption which is (relatively) very high for nearly every configurable chip you can get. You may end up looking towards CPLDs.

-Adam