A Replica of the First 4004 Calculator

mcpublic writes "For the 37th anniversary of Intel's 4004, the world's first off-the-shelf, customer-programmable microprocessor, vintage computer enthusiast Bill Kotaska has successfully built a replica of Busicom's historic 141-PF printing calculator using vintage Intel chips. Decades before the ubiquitous 'Intel inside' sticker, Japanese calculator maker Busicom introduced the first product ever built around an Intel microprocessor. Bill's homebrew replica includes a rare Shinshu Seiki Model-102 drum printer and runs firmware extracted from the original Busicom ROMs. Schematics and photos of his re-creation are available at the unofficial 4004 web site, along with Tim McNerney's new PIC-based emulator of the Model-102 printer. The site includes the Busicom 'source code,' 4004 details, interactive simulators, and other goodies for students, engineers, and computer historians." We discussed the 36th 4004 anniversary project here last year.

Comments

Re:Looks complicated

[TheRaven64]

The 4004 was around 2300 transistors, which was close to the limit of the fabrication technology at the time (if you read about how it was created you'd be amazed at how primitive it seems - you couldn't quite do it in your own home, but it's not far off). With a modern HDL designing something like the 4004 would be trivial, and even designing it a gate at a time is not hugely difficult.