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Developer Creates DIY 8-Bit CPU
MaizeMan writes "Not for the easily distracted: a Belmont software developer's hand-built CPU was featured in Wired recently. Starting with a $50 wire wrap board, Steve Chamberlin built his CPU with 1253 pieces of wire, each wire wrapped by hand at both ends. Chamberlin salvaged parts from '70s and '80s era computers, and the final result is an 8-bit processor with keyboard input, a USB connection, and VGA graphical output. More details are available on the developer's blog."
not a single version of windows was designed to run on 8 bit cpus.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
According to the fine article it has a 24bit address bus and an 8bit data bus, but presents everything via. a 16bit ISA. It's a bit like a 8088.
Of course the ISA is probably nothing like an x86, so it still wouldn't run [MS|PC|DR|Free]-DOS anyway. Apparently it does have a C compiler, so perhaps you could port Bochs or Qemu to it and then run DOS on that. Emulated. On a TTL CPU running at 2Mhz (2Mhz slower than the original IBM PC). Maybe not then.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
This sounds like the kind of project any computer engineering undergrad curriculum would cover. Myself, I have had to design/build 4 different processors of varying complexity (basic mips, pipelined, superscalar, etc) during my years as an undergrad. Its cool nonetheless and by no means "easy".
He didn't say it's a Turing Machine, he said it's Turing-complete, which means that (in theory) it can ran any conceivable program, with the obvious limits of RAM/Disk.
He didn't say it's a Turing Machine, he said it's Turing-complete, which means that (in theory) it can ran any conceivable program, with the obvious limits of RAM/Disk.
The limits of memory make the proper term "LBA-complete", where the required memory varies linearly with the size of the input, rather than "Turing-complete". But in practice, "Turing-complete" means LBA-complete.
The article mentions "Z-80" among the parts used. The Z-80 itself is an 8-Bit CPU.
The blog says "Build the CPU from scratch, primarily using basic 7400-series logic. No 6502, Z-80, etc."
That's the only reference to the Z80 I can find in either the article or the blog.
if you want to be practical then you just need sufficient storage. it if can be connected up to a 1TB hard disk then that would probably be fine.