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

Prior to this...

[gowen]

... you would have just got a "4004 Not Found" error.

Re:Prior to this...

[troll8901]

740kHz should be enough for anybody!

Re:Prior to this...

[Prof.Phreak]

Wait till DMCA lawyers get a hold of this...

Re:Prior to this...

[that this is not und]

I've written code that runs at 32KHz. It's a great way to run code that never, ever, shuts down off a coin battery for a few years.

He should be incarcerated or worse

[Anonymous Coward]

This criminal mind has misappropriated proprietary copyrighted code by the Japanese company Busicom. If he can't wait until 70 years from the death of the author, i.e. until year 2100 or so, jail is too good for him. I hope they throw him to a bunch of radioactive mutated lawyers.

Re:He should be incarcerated or worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Your sarcasm detector is miscalibrated. The "insightful" mod is correct, because what he actually said is: "If he had followed the law, this project would not have been possible. Copyright law extends too far."

Re:He should be incarcerated or worse

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

You're right.

No victim? No crime.

Unfortunately some legal systems of the world are still based on archaic thought patterns..

You mean

[Whiteox]

You mean I shouldn't have thrown mine out in the trash?

Looks complicated

[troll8901]

• Article
• Architecture diagram

Looks complicated. I would have a very difficult time coming up with such a polished work.

Re:Looks complicated

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though you're probably joking, here's a pic of the original

Re:Looks complicated

[Joce640k]

The original was neatly packaged...as a quick google would have shown you:

http://images.google.es/images?q=Busicom+141-PF

Re:Looks complicated

[sam0737]

The architecture diagram is actually so simple...each rectangle there is representing at most ~30 transistors.

Take a random rectangle of the current whatever chips architecture diagram, even for the simple one likes microcontroller, each rectangle is more complicated than the whole 4004 diagram there.

The final project of 2*14 weeks (semester) IC design course could easily be as complex as the 4004.

I have to admit it's like rocket science 35~40 years ago though. I actually admire that they could actually come up with that...imagine that they could actually be using pencil and ruler to draw the schematic and layout.

Re:Looks complicated

[Smivs]

Yes, of course I was joking! This was clearly a significant piece of kit in it's day. My point was simply that a 'replica' should look like the original article....a collection of panels, suspension parts and an engine don't make a replica car. What we were shown is perhaps more properly called a 'working demonstration model'.

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.

Re:Yes but...

[jaminJay]

Surely you mean 55378008. Or 5318008, for that matter.

Linux

[mcnazar]

yes.. yes.... but does it run Linux?

Re:Linux

[tsjaikdus]

10 print "but does it run Linux?"
20 wait for new article
30 goto 10

Re:Linux

[mustafap]

10 wait for new article
20 print "but does it run Linux?"
30 goto 10

There, fixed that for you

Re:Linux

[IL-CSIXTY4]

"WAIT" is a valid keyword in Commodore BASIC 2.0. Recall the famous easter egg Microsoft planted in the first version they sold to Commodore: WAIT 6502, n

While a novel project...

[blue l0g1c]

I'm afraid he's going to have a lot of trouble finding printer cartridges for that thing.

Link to article

[howardd21]

The link posted is to the main site 4004 site; the actual project article is here: http://www.4004.com/busicom-replica.html