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posted by
LaminatorX
on Friday February 21 2014, @01:33AM
from the I-don't-care,-I'm-still-free.-You-can't-take-the-garage-from-me dept.
from the I-don't-care,-I'm-still-free.-You-can't-take-the-garage-from-me dept.
demonlapin writes:
"Brian Benchoff at Hackaday has an ambitious new project: a homebrew computer based not on a classic 8-bit processor like the Z80 or 6502, but on the 16-bit Motorola 68000. It's a backplane-based machine with wire-wrapped connections planned. His first summary post is here. Blinkenlights are planned."
[ED Note: With so much commercially available hardware getting more and more locked down, projects like this are a good reminder of what is possible for a dedicated enthusiast.]
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Homebrew 68000-based Computer Build
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I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
-- Fry
(Score: 5, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday February 21 2014, @03:14AM
I didn't take it myself, but I did take a far simpler class later on at UC Santa Cruz where we built a Z80 computer.
The Caltech students were expected to design their computer from scratch, then wirewrap it.
A friend asked "What do we do about memory refresh?" That can be hard to get right. The slightest timing problem, and your memory will randomly twiddle bits.
"Use static RAM," was the TAs reply.
Electric wire wrap guns are quite cool to watch.
I have a major product announcement [warplife.com] coming 5:01 PM 2014-03-21 EST.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday February 21 2014, @08:05AM
I did a project very similar to this in school (one class for the board and one for the OS), and yeah, that was tricky, but not ridiculous. The bit problem for me was that mine was wire wrapped (by hand) as well and I discovered an intermittent problem on the board that acted suspiciously like a wire broken inside its insulation. Instructor said if it failed during the evaluation I failed. Ended up re-doing all the wire wrapping in one long session and amazingly didn't screw it up. I still remember the feeling of getting a wire-wrap pin stuck up under your fingernail to try to push down those top couple of winds .. good times, and bad times.
(Score: 1) by Jerry Smith on Saturday February 22 2014, @11:16AM
Cursing is the language we all have in common, I guess.
I was glad when the emulators and simulators became good enough to take a good lot of the hardware trial&error of my hands (them being both left).
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
(Score: 1) by purdy on Friday February 21 2014, @06:49PM
CS/EE 52 & 53 rocked. Especially since Gordon Moore from Intel was an alum. Back in the early 90s we had a lab full of in-circuit emulators for 386s and later i960s. Weird combination of crappy wire wrapping and state of the art ICEs. You couldn't count how many $2k pods we blew out from shorted power lines.