Yes, because the schematics had typos and other mistakes. Besides, the inner workings of the 4004 uP, 4002 RAM, and 4001 ROM were never documented publically, plus the 4004's transistor-level schematics were not exactly a logic diagram.
The Busicom 141-PF calculator code was quite a bit more work, because we didn't have the source code or the schematics.
Fred Huettig, the 4004 museum project's lead EE, reports that with no optimization whatsoever, his FPGA implementation of the Intel 4004 runs at 100MHz, and takes up about 10% of an Altera Cyclone II 8K, including all the RAMs and ROMs needed to simulate the Busicom 141-PF calculator.
It was interesting to follow the debate about why anyone would want to buy a calculator if they own a PDA. My "take" is from the opposite angle: Why would anyone want to buy yet-another gadget if they need a high-end calculator first-and-foremost, and HP's alleged new calculator is now powerful enough to be a PDA too?
The sad thing is that I have a calculator that lives on my desk, one that lives at home, and ever since I got burned by being an Apple Newton "early adopter," (weren't we all?) I was never inspired to go out and buy a "Palm." If I could buy an HP calculator that doubled as a PDA, I'd buy one in a heartbeat. Instead of living on my desk, it would live in my pocket.
--Tim
P.S. If "virtual" calculators are so good (after all, my Windows PC has one, right?) then why do I still have a calculator that permanently lives between my computer keyboard and my monitor, and it rarely gets covered with paper?
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Yes, because the schematics had typos and other mistakes. Besides, the inner workings of the 4004 uP, 4002 RAM, and 4001 ROM were never documented publically, plus the 4004's transistor-level schematics were not exactly a logic diagram. The Busicom 141-PF calculator code was quite a bit more work, because we didn't have the source code or the schematics.
Fred Huettig, the 4004 museum project's lead EE, reports that with no optimization whatsoever, his FPGA implementation of the Intel 4004 runs at 100MHz, and takes up about 10% of an Altera Cyclone II 8K, including all the RAMs and ROMs needed to simulate the Busicom 141-PF calculator.
It was interesting to follow the debate about why anyone would want to buy a calculator if they own a PDA. My "take" is from the opposite angle: Why would anyone want to buy yet-another gadget if they need a high-end calculator first-and-foremost, and HP's alleged new calculator is now powerful enough to be a PDA too? The sad thing is that I have a calculator that lives on my desk, one that lives at home, and ever since I got burned by being an Apple Newton "early adopter," (weren't we all?) I was never inspired to go out and buy a "Palm." If I could buy an HP calculator that doubled as a PDA, I'd buy one in a heartbeat. Instead of living on my desk, it would live in my pocket. --Tim P.S. If "virtual" calculators are so good (after all, my Windows PC has one, right?) then why do I still have a calculator that permanently lives between my computer keyboard and my monitor, and it rarely gets covered with paper?