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schobi 1 hours ago [-]
Brilliant to get this done all the way through.
Once you introduce a HDL and start optimizing, I would expect more than half of the transistors to be redundant. But you would end up with a circuit that you will not understand any more.. But that could give an important lesson in chip design and HDL compilers.
SouthSeaDude 8 hours ago [-]
A Work of art. I remember my dad building a computer using discrete TTL chips in our garage in Auckland. He took like two years and I'm guessing about five people saw it. I would love to see more of these on HN, but most don't get past a few upvotes in the sea of AI stuff.
Neywiny 7 hours ago [-]
Good news is there's still a lot of that on YouTube. I attribute it to Ben Eater but I'm sure there are others who helped or came before
Ah, so that's where Fred Saberhagen got the gimmick for his first Berserker story - "Without a Thought" / "Fortress Ship", 1963.
(A spaceman uses a pet that plays with beads to simulate not being temporarily incapacitated by a 'mind beam' attack.)
Thank you.
floxy 3 days ago [-]
Sweet. About the same number of transistors used in the Intel 4004.
pankajdoharey 4 hours ago [-]
That's a lot of transistors. Why do I feel it could be done in less? This is the absolute minimum number of Discrete transistors you need?
voxadam 4 hours ago [-]
"In case it is not already obvious, efficiency and sensibility were not a top priority when working on this project. I am sure there are more efficient flip- flop designs or implementations with fewer transistors, especially by building composite gates that combine NAND and NOR gates, but I don't really care :)"
Neywiny 7 hours ago [-]
Would standard HDL synthesis engines be better at this in terms of schematic capture? They could do optimizations that I think if I'm reading right weren't done here
Once you introduce a HDL and start optimizing, I would expect more than half of the transistors to be redundant. But you would end up with a circuit that you will not understand any more.. But that could give an important lesson in chip design and HDL compilers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_Educable_Noughts_and_...
"Great Tinkertoy Computer" - https://www.science20.com/brain_candyfeed_your_mind/great_ti...
(A spaceman uses a pet that plays with beads to simulate not being temporarily incapacitated by a 'mind beam' attack.)
Thank you.