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The 8-Bit Computer That's Been Built By Hand

Posted by Soulskill on from the just-enough-bits-for-mario dept.

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."

8 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Old school by Zakabog · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Old school by j00r0m4nc3r · · Score: 3, Funny

      TTL chips? Luxury! When I was a lad we had to use coconuts and vine to fashion NAND gates.

    2. Re:Old school by msobkow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The hard part is finding the loose wire.

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    3. Re:Old school by Jeremi · · Score: 4, Funny

      A thousand monkeys standing around a box of parts would "accidentally" build a computer

      Ah, I see you are familiar with the TRS-80.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  2. To bake an apple pie from scratch... by John.P.Jones · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:To bake an apple pie from scratch... by tylernt · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Also there is this TED video where a guy tries to build a toaster from raw materials...

      I don't think people appreciate the "tech tree" (to use Starcraft parlance) you have to walk down to get to the simplest of modern household items. The toaster is a good example, but now imagine starting from zero -- you can't even start with iron ore, because you don't have any tools to mine it with! So start with banging rocks to get something sharp you can use to cut down a tree, so you can make a handle to make a stone axe. Hopefully this is enough to get some iron ore, but now you also need to make something to smelt your ore in, such as a bloomery. And for that, you need charcoal. And for that...

      Basically, the TED guy making his toaster cheated by used modern tools to get his raw materials. And even with cheating, his toaster never toasted any bread.

      The tech tree for a dollar store pocket calculator is staggering, let alone a Space Shuttle. I don't think many people are conscious of this when they toss that toaster in the garbage and spend $10 on a new one.

      --
      DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
  3. Reminds me of the one by Jim+Buzbee · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Reminds me of the one my brother built here except my brother's computer runs Minux.

  4. Re:not quite... by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It looks like he used actual 74xx series TTL chips to make the CPU. From the parts list he isn't doing microcoding, and isn't even using ALU or bit-slice MSI chips. It's the real thing.