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The 8-Bit Computer That's Been Built By Hand
nk497 writes "Forget snapping a few components into a motherboard — programming enthusiast Jack Eisenmann has made his own PC from scratch. His Duo Adept, as he's named it, features 64KB of main memory, 256 bytes of RAM and, in total, 263 lines of code for his homemade OS. Sure, it can't run Crysis, but it does run a game he's written himself."
I wasn't around for this sort of stuff but wasn't this the sort of thing Radio Shacks customers were doing 25+ years ago?
Ever since Cosmos I can't take the phrase 'from scratch' seriously.
Also there is this TED video where a guy tries to build a toaster from raw materials...
holy shit, who knew that web rings still existed in the 21st century!
They want their homebrew computer back.
As an aside: this is obviously someone who uses a Mac to be a hipster...
Reminds me of the Maybe systems that MIT undergraduates build by hand in 6.004 (or used to, when I was involved) that were then programmed to emulate about 3 or 4 different architectures.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
...He still used a microprocessor in an integrated circuit. In college back in the 1980's some ubernerds built a 4004 with discrete transistors.
But still, i give this person _HUGE_ props, breadboarding a circuit that complex is very, very, VERY time consuming amount of debug. it would drive most people insane, literally, it would break their brains to try and debug this.
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I have to ask (since at the time I am writing this, no one else has done so yet)...
Does it run Linux?
And if it does, just imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things.
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... the portable version?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
This computer is of no use if it can't store my bitcoin wallet.
Here's one that running Minix: http://www.homebrewcpu.com/
dont forget to scavenge that printer memory from old dot matrix printers like the old days ;-)
I used to do this sort of thing 30-35 years ago. I remember building some of the first altair machines and hacking some cp/m code with Neil Colvin in his basement. I got together with a couple of guys to wire wrap one of the first (if not THE first) S100 bus graphics boards. We used to cobble up single board computers like this all the time, but they cost thousands of dollars to build. Good times, good times. Glad its the 'in' thing now, I feel like I know something ahead of the curve.
If this was Minecraft someone would wander by, grab and handful of those pretty blue wires and rip them out.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
He claims to be from Massachusetts. That's in America. Everybody knows that American teenagers only care about sitting on their fat asses and playing games, talking on their phones while driving, getting drunk, and that they are too stupid to find the earth on a globe. Plainly this is a hoax from China.
263 lines of code? Really ??? How can you mix lines of code with video scanlines on your head?
Those would have to be some long lines, anyway...
If you wish to make a computer from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
Reminds me of the one my brother built here except my brother's computer runs Minux.
Any computer that looks like a Blake's 7 prop is fine with me.
All blue wires... have fun troubleshooting that!
Everyone has right to their own hobbies, but think what can be accomplished with the same amount of labor and modern parts. Instead of making a CPU from hundreds of TTL gates, build a personal supercomputer from hundreds of ARM processors and custom operating system to effectively use that power for virtual reality or physics simulations. Hobbyists who has done this decades ago were futuristic not retro, creating devices that were not widely available, at least to private individuals.
And the mid 1980's also called, and they said that in such a game you might get eaten by a Grue.
It's the right direction for demonstrating that computers are based on discrete logical components, no matter how tiny and embedded in a chip; and the right direction for demonstrating that, given enough time and information, it would be possible to truly understand any digital device.
Hmm, I wonder how many TTL chips I would need for a nice little PDP-11...
He wired up a bunch of ICs. For "From Scratch", google 'toaster from scratch...
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You appear to be wrong. He built a minicomputer from logic chips. Look at the schematic - why would there be an instruction decoder if he used a microprocessor?
I wonder why he didn't wire-wrap it. This is a crazy way to build a computer - thousands of blue wires, any one of which could fail with a loose connection at any time.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
I assume he went out and mined the ore for his solder, and drilled an oilwell to make plastic for the circuit board
Guy built this a few years back out of TTL as well.
http://www.galaxiki.org/web/main/_blog/all/build-your-own-nasa-apollo-landing-computer-no-kidding.shtml
Another interesting computer built from electrical relays.
in the old days doing things 'by hand' was the only way it got done. But i guess ill give him credit for the patience that it requires to do this sort of stuff. ( does bring back old memories however.. sore fingers, smell of burnt solder in the air.. )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yes, Jack Eisenmann. Some of you guys are overly critical/speculative of the project. I didn't make this machine to make money or make a "superior computer"; I did it just for fun. Also, I have just graduated from highschool, so it is kindof miraculous that I can do this at all. So just appreciate it as a crazy mess of wires that actually works. :)
No, there is no microprocessor. The most complex chips in the machine are SRAM chips. You can see from the list on my site.
Thanks to the supportive comments!
He certainly had some fun building this. The wires are used probably because he wasn't sure that everything works right; it's much easier to rework a wire connection than an inner PCB trace.
I suspect he is a strong amateur, but not a professional. A professional would design the whole thing in a simulator first, and once that works he'd implement it on a PCB (if not an FPGA.)
I personally haven't built processors, but I built a few peripherals for PDP11/LSI11, all from discrete logic. And I serviced IBM 360/370 systems [long time ago] - they were built exactly this way, but were a bit more modular.
I somewhat dislike the Slashdot commenting system. So for the 3rd time, since I want to stand up for myself, to avoid having a "hidden" comment I am going to restate: I, Jack Eisenmann, built the DUO Adept in highschool, and I have no formal education in electronics. I learned everything by experimenting with breadboards, getting tips from online users, and poking around Google. I don't feel that the blurb does justice for my accomplishments.
Que the dickheads that give us the good ol' "I don't see why this is newsworthy.....blah"
We all realize you're the biggest brain in the world. You're smarter than everyone, you win. We give up. Now let us lowly troglodytes enjoy the fucking article please.
In Soviet Russia computer wirewraps you.
The kid is showing off skills that he probably doesn't even have. No doubt he got numerous hours of help and funding from his father. I've seen this replay so many times before, at this point it just sickens me. Doesn't he have anything better to do with his time???
Full respect for this guy.
Very similar to the "Educ-8" TTL computer from Electronics Australia mag in 1974
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EDUC-8_Microcomputer.jpg
and http://www.sworld.com.au/steven/educ-8/
And while you're pooh-poohing 'wasted effort' in bare-metal computing ask yourself what proportion of 'programmer-man-hours' (rough term) end up being wasted at high-level modern day systems? And for those that are implemented that don't cause grief, how long do they last? Of course some pootle on quietly for a very long time, but many never hit the mainstream or if they do for a short while until revision or abandonment.
This guy's apparently in highschool. Honestly, as someone with a computer engineering degree designing hardware and software for a living, forget doing this shit at his age, go chase some girls and try to get laid.
Actually, lots of scratches on my back by my wife, who then carried our son to term. Does that count?
I built my own 8-bit computer over 30 years ago while killing time between jobs. And, no, I was not a programmer or hardware technician at the time.
From scratch? Did he first create the universe?
Not 263 lines of code, the video memory is organised into 263 lines.
It reminds me of the time I applied for a job at NCR 15 years ago. Interview was going great, and I asked so what will I be doing here? They showed me the server I would be maintaining. I don't remember the model but it was a server completely built with wirewrap technology, 3'x3'x6'. Wires from top to bottom, back around, this way, that away, most of them 'feet' long. After seeing that I said to myself, "If you are going to relegate me to the 60's for a career, a potentially career ending position, you are going to pay for it." I set my price. Too high for them, but damn if I was going to do it for a standard wage. Why the F they didn't migrate those clients off that thing years ago is beyond me.
I'm not sure if the guy from this article qualifies, but it sounds like he is close.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Jack Eisenmann will never need more than 256 bytes of RAM.
In an alternate universe where I missed theoretical CS lectures, I wanted to build a (Universal) Turing Machine from scratch... but soon ran out of tape. Then I wanted to build a Register Machine from scratch, but ran out of memory before realizing that it was equivalent in power to the Turing Machine I couldn't build. Then I got hold of an Oracle (sadly not the company), but this Oracle-augmented machine STILL had limitations and couldn't compute EVERY imaginable function. Every time I wanted to showcase those machine, someone came with a diagonalized function that wasn't supported. Then I gave up building computers from scratch altogether.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
263 lines on the display. The article describing it gets it wrong, too, but there's an OS listing at the site.
I wish my laptop booted as fast as his computer!