My first computer was a Vim with a 6502. I had to assemble my code by hand. Counting the displacement for relative branches was always challenging. It makes you appreciate what an assembler and linker does for you.
I learnt machine language on a SYM-1 with 4 k of ram. Expanded that with an S-100 bus memory board to 16k. Learnt a lot about hash on the DC power supply lines and how to suppress the damm thing from scrambling memory. In fact I learnt much more about IC interfacing at that time than when I completed a "proper" Electronics Diploma a few years later at University. By then the fun about building your own was beginning to disappear when the 386 and 486 motherboards appeared on the scene. I'm forever grateful that I learnt electronics and programming during the time of 56K modems. Nowdays I read about people not understanding how memory pointers work and I have to laugh.
I used to work with boards like this in arcade machines and 80s-90s pinball machines frequently. Gorf, Missile Command, Asteroids, etc. It made repair easy once you found the problem. Finding the problem could be a problem however. Best deal I ever got was a “dead” Pinbot pinball machine. Had to replace 2 dead transistors I got off another dead board. Got the machine for $200 and cost nothing to repair. Knowledge is power.
the music was a high point of this one, for me. I've always loved your intro theme, but the backing tracks did a lot for the experience, this time, too!
Hi David! I just wanted to say thank you for your channel and the dedication you show to it! I wanted to study CS in college, but after my first year, I was dismayed by how BORING and aloof the department at my school is (and I go to an ivy...). I have learned more in 3 weeks since discovering your channel than I have in 6 months of CS. Keep up the inspiring work!!!
When I was an engineering student, one of the courses involved designing a computer out of what were called bit slicers, basically a computer without a cpu on a chip but rather building a cpu or rather an alu out of multiple chips. Also, it was and still is common in digital electronics courses to build state machines, the early Pioneer and Mariner space probes used state machines instead of computers. In essence, you could make a state machine to perform all the functions of a computer, it's even technically correct to call a computer a state machine. State machines can be made from mere transistors, op-amps, discrete TTL logic gates, from counters or even from eproms. Today people take megabytes and multiple dynamically loaded libraries to write programs that we use to write in just a hundred bytes without a library, we use to call making your own personal library making your own computer language. People just can't do anything without a ton of stuff being done by someone else which they don't even know if they need them.
John Wang I do admire all the work that was done to make my life easier, I’m very grateful for the people who spent pain staking hours working on today’s libraries. I have attempted to learn but 99% of it goes over my head. 😔
Challenge yourself with a one bit Texas controller, not a bit slice even. IIRC 4 bit instruction set and a one bit output data bus. A MAXQ TTA OISA from Dallas/Maxim is also a mental challenge. Instruction set; MOVE f ddd ddd ssss ssss.
John Wang. Hmmpf interesting name , do you have any connectiion with Wang Computers? If its not a state machine it must be either A Von Neuman machine Or A Moore Mealy machine Correct?
I agree with some comments done: the number of pieces seems high, but considering that these are just BASE circuits in reality is really wonderful how many little pieces they are using!!! And since the step to transistor is little I also think it would be wonderful to see one done with them!
Now make a computer with vacuum tubes instead of transistors. Im sure that if you filled out the entire state of Texas with them that you could probably run Tetris.
I had a customer that has done it and it was insane.He powered it from his 240 volt line in his house because of the power it took to run.It has massive hound wound transformers and runs a grid voltage of 600 VOLTS.I dont know what he spent but it wasnt the cheapest way to go thats for sure.But man is the thing bad ass once warmed up and it even uses period correct neon bulbs and nixie tubes.
I've got some pictures somewhere but I was in aw of it.The whole thing was about 3-3.5ft deep,4-4.5 ft wide and about the same in height,it was huge although he said it was small by historical standards.It was all point to point construction too.How they wired it is beyond me.Although the son was a engineer in his 50's and his father worked as a engineer at RCA and then in Bell Labs back in their prime. At the time he was telling me how his father helped invent transistors as we know them and to be honest i thought he was full of it.But I later found out he was in fact a tech who worked under Shockley when they invented the first transistor.I really wish I had got to meet the father but he died of cancer right after they finished the computer as a father/son project.I'll see if i can find the pics because the place was like a electronics museum .
When in school, (1980) we were taught that TTL logic switching was very fast. I often wondered if anyone ever attempted to bulid a working computer out of only TTL chips...This a a good example and I didn't know these kits were available. Nice little project there, congratulations on completing it successfully.
I was thinking the same. As soon as I saw those images they were familiar to me from the 80's for showing off colour capabilities of computers. And I recall my mind being blown at those graphics at the time! :)
re hash 👍🏼Thanks, you’ll find the full version here and on Bandcamp: soundcloud.com/eox-studios/tlg-seikos-theme Complete album later this year along with the game itself hopefully. 😎🎷🎹
VWestlife Not actually, but a lot of older and newer FM based sounds: Yamaha TX-81z, XS-7, MotifRack, bunch of Roland synths/modules and ReFX Nexus2 with the FM expansions. :)
A little tip for anyone soldering ICs: First solder every other pin and then come back and solder the rest. Old ICs are extremely sensitive to heat (and modern ICs aren't indestructible either) and this helps spread the heat, limiting the chance of damaging the chip.
@@Milamberinx I guess in higher-frequency applications it might be interesting to have all components as close as possible to the circuit board ground plane, and also avoid the longer leads of the added sockets, but at 6MHz it would probably not matter. If I had bought the kit I'd have added sockets for the ICs.
First solder a diagonally opposite corner pair of leads to fix the package. You can see this has been done in the video, though it's not mentioned in the commentary. Then you can go round soldering alternate leads as suggested by hellterminator.
I've built this way ZX Spectrum 48K clone back in 1996 (produced by a local factory in exUSSR). Bought all bits and pieces on the open-air market. It was a lot of fun.
I think I just found a High School graduation present for my daughter. She's planning on studying EE in college and this would be a step up from the mostly simple electronics kits she's assembled and played with so far.
Daniel Bartholomew I would rather recommend you to have a look at the Ben eater computer here on RUclips. It's a phenomenal instruction Series on how to build a very basic computer. After you done this, you pretty much know how a computer really works. The drawback is, that you have to get the individual parts yourself, since there is no kit or so available. Also some parts are hard to find, and finally you can expect to also pay at least 150€ in parts. However, I am glad I did the journey.
When I graduated high school my dad died a year before from his fast paced lifestyle of booze, amphetamines, and liver damage. He got me unpaid child support payments.
EE postgraduate student here......don't :-/ . This isn't EE. It's just soldering together "stuff". Raspberri pi + arduino on the other hand....perhaps throw in an Analog Discovery by Diglent....that's stuff even a graduate Engineer will use all the time to test some stuff etc. Apparently they make interesting STM 32 boards now, much like arduino but tons more powerful. So many things out there which are just as fun, but so much more poweful and useful for years to come. Perhaps it's just me, but the more EE i learn, the less i care about stuff like this. It's cute, sure. But...mehhh....has no edge.
If home-brew hobby computer is what you want then the system Clickety Clack or Paul Law have built is much more interesting. Don't expect to play Crysis, but don't expect to be bored ether. They are objects of beauty.
Brilliant, Thank you! I think your criticism of the chip count being high is a little unfair. The board is an excellent teaching aid on how microprocessors are designed. Reducing the chip count by using an existing microprocessor (such as the Z80 or 6502) - would in my opinion - defeat the purpose of the kit. I'm amazed that the designers have got so much 'power' in their design. My homemade microprocessor which uses TTL chips, fits on a king-sized bed and has 1K of ram and 8 instructions.
One of the reasons I enjoy your channel so much is how approachable you make all the items you discuss. You take great care to show detail in assembly or cleaning; you always give a tip for the beginner during the project and never come off as haughty; you clearly put a lot of effort into editing B-roll and close-ups.
The pictures shown in the picture view application are all famous computer pictures, for example the parrot is used in wikipedia's article about color palettes en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_color_palettes
Back in there 80's I was an the final testing for Perkin Elmer Computers this is how our computers where made. The processor was on 4 separate 15X30 inch board's with up to 4 more boards of memory, the memory controller and cache had their own boards. The best part is that we could step the clock and follow each bit around the processor. What you call the virtual computer we called the micro code which has the logic to control the hardware. I would love one of these.
I guess it depends on where you want to start. When I was building loose chips processors like that in the 1970s the first thing to do was make a cross-assembler on some other machine, then write the loader-debugger and push it down (somehow) to the target. At that point you could build a native assembler with the debugger, but again it is better to cross-compile that, it saves your sanity. Then you are set to go on the machine itself if you have IO working.
Yeah I was just about to post a comment on that myself. I actually exported the video into premier and looked at it up really close. It defies any explanation of mine.
Yes, when you correctly solder something for the first time, it is wonderful to see how the solder flows into the joint. One of the younger members of the ham radio club liked it very much too.
@Fatih Kan I have faith in you! Clean the tip of the iron, add a little bit of solder to the iron, FIRMLY place the iron on the pin and the trace, wait a couple of seconds, add the solder the pin and the trace (not the iron), let it flow for a couple of seconds, remove iron.
Nee I think that it would be to build those logic doors by hand, I have't check the schematics but I guess that you have to build up the processor on the bus.
I want to frame that Monster 6502 on my wall. Micros upgraded my whole thinking. It's like a whole new sandbox once it starts to all click in your mind. I can't stop talking about em because they are everywhere and in everything. I love teaching how to use them.
when i was a kid, i listened to all kinds of 80's music, to the point where i got sick of listening to 80's music because i had heard it so much. hearing an original track with an 80's style in your videos is honestly really refreshing and its genuinely good music!
Not sure if David looks at his comments on his older videos, but I really love his videos. He's really gives out good detailed information on this restoration videos on how all the nooks and crannies works. I've never grew up with old Tech like this, since being a 90s kid, but I do remember my old Windows 95 machine.
@@vek7933 actually it's a term for diagnostic lights on old mainframes. it originated from a german/english mockup language joke dating back to IBM in the 50s.
@@notthatntg Actually not... The bit increase is driven by the need for memory. And by doubling the bits (which is an exponential increase!) the memory capacity is squared which is kind of 'exponential of exponential'. We haven't used full 64 bits in our 64-bit processors for addressing yet (just 40 of them, considering increasing one bit will double the supported memory, there is still a LONG way to go!). I'm not placing my bet on 128-bit computers becoming mainstream anytime soon, not to say 512-bits.
There's something utterly satisfying about watching you assemble a computer. Let's work on a compiler for mainstream languages to the Gigatron machine language!
Beautiful presentation! And kudos for your selection of 80s wait-muzak track. I trained at an electronics tech school in the early 90s. For the Digital phase, our lab was to build a 10-byte SRAM arithmetic logic unit. Just 10 LSI chips, a bank of 8 lever switches, 8 LEDs for the binary count, and single digital number display. Don't recall its clock speed, but it would heat up fast!
Was just coming to verify this was reported. I remember it well on the Amiga in the demos? Or a sample in Deluxe Paint? I remember being amazed the first time I saw it and the other associated images on the Amiga.
Are ya telling me ya have never played Snake? :O Yar supposed to eat all the dots, grow bigger and the challenge is to not hit any walls or parts of yourself whilst eating as much as possible.
You are the Bob Ross of computers.. i don't know anything about most of the things you are talking about, but you seem to make it so easy to understand. I just love it. It's relaxing. You have a smooth voice, always with a hint of humor and joy accompanying you making me really interested in reliving my old ms-dos/c64 days.. Thanks to you a lot!
Christian Pasche it's different than the Nokia version: all the food is one the screen at once, the eaten food gets left behind as a trap, and he can't see the difference between green and orange because he's colorblind.
Gigatron has released ROM v3 with tinyBASIC v2 and WozMon, and a PS/2 keyboard adapter for the game controller port. Hopefully this makes the product more interesting to you. You can buy the ROM and adapter on their website.
Damn man...I know quite a bit about this stuff. I built my first PC in 1994 cloned 486DX2 for Doo...I mean homework. I worked in the IT industry off and on for years. I build superguns for fun and work on old arcade cabs for fun. The reason I bring all of this up is...your knowledge is astounding. I'm learning new stuff and it's great. I know this video is at least a year old but bravo!
I love your videos. I stumbled upon your channel looking for good info on CPU technology, can't stop watching. I kick myself for giving up all the Commodore stuff I use to have!
Dude, you never played snake before? I'm confused how an 8-bit Guy such as yourself has missed the quintessential 8-bit game. That feels like an anomaly on such a large scale it would take the Gigatron seven and a half million years to process it.
It's mentioned in a reply to another comment, but this version had an extra feature, where the snake leaves behind differently colored droppings after eating (which to be honest I didn't notice the first time around), but due to his colorblindness they all looked the same to him, so from his point of view some of the dots would randomly kill him, making the functioning of the game unclear.
The original Wang 2200 minicomputer was entirely TTL-logic-chip based, and was released in 1973, a couple of years after Intel started making microprocessors. I guess it took a few years for the concept of a microprocessor to catch on with computer manufacturers.
You couldn't put a lot of circuitry on a single chip back then. Chips were also extremely limited in how many pins they could have. It absolutely made sense to keep building computers out of TTL chips for quite some time.
In the 1980's, I worked for a company called Interspec, Inc., and one of the software wizards was Bill Mauchly, the son of J. William Mauchly, the inventor and builder of ENIAC at Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania Moore School of Engineering. He was just as much of a genius as his famous father, and it was my honor to have been able to work with him.
For me, no. It doesn't have a microprocessor because it IS a processor on its own. What it needs is a header to communicate with other devices, like a proper computer processor. That'd make it useful.
I agree. For the price we need to be able to tinker around with it. Who came up with the target audience of someone that is willing to solder it together but only play a few games on it? That doesn't make sense. This has so much more potential to be something interesting. It needs a big honkin GPIO on the back and an open source firmware so it can interface with anything. Someone will easily get BASIC running on it and then we're golden. Printers, scanners, keyboards, mice, webcams, speakers, LCDs, hard drives, networking, etc. etc.
Mark M I agree. Really you’re just getting a soldering project. You’re not gonna play these games for very long, It doesn’t have any GPIO pins, and you can’t program it on a the computer it’s self. This has so much more potential. But for $200 it just doesn’t make sense. Maybe a v2.0 will be better.
Good point about a breakout header. I could easily add that in a next run. You can already hook up wires directly to the output pins of the XOUT chip, but a header is much neater. The firmware and tool chain are open source and in github. The schematics will be open source soon. So far the focus has been on making the hardware ready for friends and early enthusiasts. It is still a hobby project for us. I'm working on a GCL programming tutorial as a next step with simple practical examples for learning. As David mentioned at the end, it is just a software upgrade away from being programmable on the thing itself. The Loader is a backdoor so it is not totally closed.
Racer!!?? Oh man!!! That just gave me some serious shivers on the retro spine!! I remember playing a game with excatly that background imagery, sound, look and feel on my Commodore C116 back when I was a little kid in the 80's!!!! Only that the car was red. there were some other opponents and it was called something else but racer. And I loved the 80's style montage sequence in your video!
Those graphics are awfully impressive for TTL. Images like those (USC ones) were common to showcase Atart ST, Amiga & Apple IIGS capabilities in the 80's
Check out the Alto from 1972 which also produced graphics on a bit mapped display and also had no single processor IC. Xerox Alto arrives for restoration ruclips.net/video/YupOC_6bfMI/видео.html
7:04 no no, it does have a central processing unit, a CPU. Its not a microprocessor, but the name CPU was used long before microprocessors were invented. They usually took shape of circuit boards just like the one you have of course.
I built a mult- board, through hole, 4 bit computer (the Wombat). The CPU board had an ALU chip as its heart. Excuse, I was very young at the time and a 6800 was well North of $100.
I loved working on a PDP-8. Even have some of the Flip-Chip circuit cards. Eight opcodes would have crippled the PDP-8. It also had different group operate micro instructions. At DEC in 1969 I worked as a repair technician and one of the PDP-8 options I worked on was a vector graphics adapter called KV8I connected to a Tektronix video display. This system allowed me to play some of the first video games. Much more advanced that "Pong". A lunar landing game with the display showing the LEM, adjustable thrust coming out of the engine. Displays of miles to landing zone, speed, altitude, angle of thrust. You had to adjust angle and apply thrust and steering to land the LEM. Crashing happened often. And as you would try again you would fly over your previous landing attempts and see the crashed spacecraft. When you landed at the landing target, a little guy would climb down the ladder and go into a McDonalds, order a cheeseburger and a Coke, come out and go up ladder and then take off. End of game. Back to work now.
This put me in mind of Ben Eater's breadboard computer project. The cute thing about the breadboard computer is that once you understand how it works, it's not very hard to expand it, both in memory capacity and in number and type of instructions.
My dream homebrew computer would be a small, portable MS-DOS gaming machine with an Intel Quark (a very low power embedded CPU based on the Pentium P54C).
Ah yes!! Das Blinkenlights (5:00)!!! Many a display of electronic apparatus at school open evenings would carry the following sign: "Achtung! Der Machine ist nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengraben. Ist easy snappen der Springenwerk Blowenfusen, und Corkenpoppin mit Spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by die Dumpkofen. Die Rubbernecken Sightseeren keepen die hands in der Pockets. Relaxen und watchen das Blinkenlights."
According to Google Translate: "Attention! The machine is not for finger-punctured and mid-ditch. Easy snappen is the jumping factory Blowenfusen, and Corkenpoppin with top parking. Is not for work by the Dumpkofen. The Rubbernecken Sightseeren keepen the hands in the Pockets. Relax and watch the Blinkenlights" Makes more sense in German. LOL
In 1983 I designed the digital portion of test equipment for our GE E2C radar. There was one guy in our group (a bunch of very smart engineers and scientists) who poo-poo'd constantly the fact it was microprocessor controlled. "The whole thing can be done with synchronous circuitry" he lamented multiple times. I was a new engineer, and it was not my call that it be micro-based. To this day I don't know how it could do everything it did, if it didn't have a micro. A lot *more* circuitry, no doubt.
Amazing, very nice design. And the designer knew his classics by labeling the LEDs "Blinkenlights" at 5:00. Good that there is a transparent cover to avoid gefingerpoken und mittengraben!
I too, love circuitry and motherboards. I have the motherboard from my parent's first computer on a display stand in my room. It even has the original ram and pci modules, as well as the cpu. It has no use anymore, but it looks nice. I'm super proud of it because it was the first computer I ever disassembled.
I just read your “Dream Computer” description, and I can see why it hasn’t been built. The 6502 was an incredibly bad CPU, and not very programmer friendly. It was like the instruction set was purposely designed to be a nightmare for programmers. It is also the reason why the original Apple computers were so limited. The only reason that NASA used it, is because it was the only CPU that came in a ceramic package that was certified for space. If you want 8 bits, the Z80 is probably the best CPU from that era, and it’s pretty easy to page the memory to go beyond 64K. Also, the Z80 has a built-in refresh counter for dynamic memory.
The Motorola 6800 family I always thought was better because it fully separated the data pins from the address pins so there was no need to switch back and forth on the bus. Obviously most people thought otherwise.
IIt is OK to be honest concerning what you are first encountering. No one person can have experienced every game ever made. Besides...maybe it was not widely available in the U.K.
G Henrickson did you forget who you were watching and think you were on a techmoan video? Also, Snake is like a classic game. It would be like saying you had never heard of centipede or galiga.
I did a double take when he said that. Dude can literally physically build a computer and has a retro tech youtube channel, but doesn't know Snake. I'm not knocking him, of course you don't know what you don't know. It is however a bit like hearing a car expert not know what fuzzy dice are.
Really interesting, and affordable - what a great teaching tool. Thanks for sharing. One benefit is no Class 1 Clean Room required, so you can have your cat with you when building. Thanks again.
my ideal machine is a circuit board that let's you plug in processors and memory chips at different locations. you can create your own bus at the back of the board using parallel cables of various widths, then use github to develop an open source operating system for the most popular layouts.
If you are in to this sort of thing I would suggest you watch the creator talk about the creation: Search for "Hackerhotel 2018 Walter Belgers Gigatron" on youtube and you'll find his full hour long presentation. It's pretty interesting as they've done all the hard work in software instead of hardware. For hobbyists in electronics they've done a really great job. Disclaimer: I'm a friend of Walter and have seen his presentation at Hacker hotel live.
L3 P3 "Das Blinkenlights" is old mainframe-era hacker slang, going back to the 1960s. Someone who worked on this kit is a seriously old-school. (It originated on a poster deliberately written in terrible fake german telling people to keep "der mittenhands" off the computer and "watchen das blinkenlights" instead. Or something along those lines, it's been awhile since I've seen the text.)
Jason Blalock ACHTUNG! Alles touristen und non-technischen peepers! Das machine control is nicht fur gerfinger-poken und mittengrabben. Oderwise is easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowen fuse, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Der machine is diggen by experten only. Is nicht fur geverken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseenen keepen das cotten picken hands in das pockets, so relaxen und watchen das blinkenlights. Also it's dutch doing a bad job of trying to sound german
@Rob C No idea, but back then every tv studio had a few shelves of royalty free music libraries and also background effects you could use a charachter generator over. a lot of those mini infomercials used the hell out of them
My first computer was a Vim with a 6502. I had to assemble my code by hand. Counting the displacement for relative branches was always challenging. It makes you appreciate what an assembler and linker does for you.
vim...
I learnt machine language on a SYM-1 with 4 k of ram. Expanded that with an S-100 bus memory board to 16k. Learnt a lot about hash on the DC power supply lines and how to suppress the damm thing from scrambling memory. In fact I learnt much more about IC interfacing at that time than when I completed a "proper" Electronics Diploma a few years later at University. By then the fun about building your own was beginning to disappear when the 386 and 486 motherboards appeared on the scene. I'm forever grateful that I learnt electronics and programming during the time of 56K modems. Nowdays I read about people not understanding how memory pointers work and I have to laugh.
I don't care what anyone says, he does an awesomely clean soldering job. 👍
J. Green it looks like his soldering skills have improved tremendously in recent months. It looked super slick this time.
Agreed. Such an improvement from when he made the PE6502 Hobby Computer. Practice makes perfect.
Are we sure those are his hands?
I agree. Very nice build. I be jealous.
that was the first thing I thought when I saw the circuit board soldering. great job, I wish I was that good :D
5:00 lets just appreciate the fact that they printed "Blinkenlights" on the PCB.
telnet blinkenlights.nl 666
I know that from both Windows 93 and a tutorial
@@anthonyvaldes6070 If you've IPv6 enabled now, it has a new surprise for you :-)
Also, I misremembered, it's `telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl` :-)
@@anthonyvaldes6070 Wikipedia's article gives an example from 1955.
@Kiwi Official It's not. Flashing lights would be "blinkende Lichter"
That intro music is so kickass it makes me wanna throw a tanktop, shorts, headband & sweatbands on and jog to the grocery store
Underrated comment
That's so dumb, I love it
I'd jog to the outro music
Jajajajajaja
Just do it! And don't forget the neon colors
I love the 8-bit cat designed in monochrome to save system memory!
Hahaha
It is a 2-bit cat
@@nwobhm1992 1-bit, actually; 1 bit per pixel is enough for a black and white display without a greyscale
@@BertGrink yes, lol i made mistake
This Video Is So Awesome, Well Done!! 😃😄😃😄😍🥰😍🥰🤗🤗
I used to work with boards like this in arcade machines and 80s-90s pinball machines frequently. Gorf, Missile Command, Asteroids, etc. It made repair easy once you found the problem. Finding the problem could be a problem however.
Best deal I ever got was a “dead” Pinbot pinball machine. Had to replace 2 dead transistors I got off another dead board. Got the machine for $200 and cost nothing to repair. Knowledge is power.
the music was a high point of this one, for me. I've always loved your intro theme, but the backing tracks did a lot for the experience, this time, too!
The music during the assembly is so nice and relaxing. Love it.
Hi David! I just wanted to say thank you for your channel and the dedication you show to it! I wanted to study CS in college, but after my first year, I was dismayed by how BORING and aloof the department at my school is (and I go to an ivy...). I have learned more in 3 weeks since discovering your channel than I have in 6 months of CS. Keep up the inspiring work!!!
Update on your career?
So it's a macroprocessor computer?
definitely
Nice
When I was an engineering student, one of the courses involved designing a computer out of what were called bit slicers, basically a computer without a cpu on a chip but rather building a cpu or rather an alu out of multiple chips. Also, it was and still is common in digital electronics courses to build state machines, the early Pioneer and Mariner space probes used state machines instead of computers. In essence, you could make a state machine to perform all the functions of a computer, it's even technically correct to call a computer a state machine. State machines can be made from mere transistors, op-amps, discrete TTL logic gates, from counters or even from eproms. Today people take megabytes and multiple dynamically loaded libraries to write programs that we use to write in just a hundred bytes without a library, we use to call making your own personal library making your own computer language. People just can't do anything without a ton of stuff being done by someone else which they don't even know if they need them.
John Wang
I do admire all the work that was done to make my life easier, I’m very grateful for the people who spent pain staking hours working on today’s libraries. I have attempted to learn but 99% of it goes over my head. 😔
Challenge yourself with a one bit Texas controller, not a bit slice even. IIRC 4 bit instruction set and a one bit output data bus. A MAXQ TTA OISA from Dallas/Maxim is also a mental challenge. Instruction set; MOVE f ddd ddd ssss ssss.
John Wang.
Hmmpf interesting name , do you have any connectiion with Wang Computers?
If its not a state machine it must be either
A Von Neuman machine
Or
A Moore Mealy machine
Correct?
@@QqJcrsStbt What is the part number of the Texas single bit processor?
I agree with some comments done: the number of pieces seems high, but considering that these are just BASE circuits in reality is really wonderful how many little pieces they are using!!! And since the step to transistor is little I also think it would be wonderful to see one done with them!
Now make a computer with vacuum tubes instead of transistors. Im sure that if you filled out the entire state of Texas with them that you could probably run Tetris.
lel :)
I had a customer that has done it and it was insane.He powered it from his 240 volt line in his house because of the power it took to run.It has massive hound wound transformers and runs a grid voltage of 600 VOLTS.I dont know what he spent but it wasnt the cheapest way to go thats for sure.But man is the thing bad ass once warmed up and it even uses period correct neon bulbs and nixie tubes.
Holy hell, we need a video of that monster machine. Just description alone is tech porn.
I've got some pictures somewhere but I was in aw of it.The whole thing was about 3-3.5ft deep,4-4.5 ft wide and about the same in height,it was huge although he said it was small by historical standards.It was all point to point construction too.How they wired it is beyond me.Although the son was a engineer in his 50's and his father worked as a engineer at RCA and then in Bell Labs back in their prime. At the time he was telling me how his father helped invent transistors as we know them and to be honest i thought he was full of it.But I later found out he was in fact a tech who worked under Shockley when they invented the first transistor.I really wish I had got to meet the father but he died of cancer right after they finished the computer as a father/son project.I'll see if i can find the pics because the place was like a electronics museum .
lol it wouldn't need to be that big Tetris is a relatively small program. :)
4:32 Kitty! So cute. I love the idea behind this computer. Very cool indeed. I bought a Sinclair Z80 replica kit that I want to assemble first.
The performance is actually pretty remarkable considering it is only using TTL logic chips.
Yep they would have used ECL in the day.
I love the montage music as you solder and snip!
I was gonna say the same thing. Very soothing.
Its like rocky training montage with chips instead!
The music he uses is almost always outstanding, considering the subject matter. His theme music is perfect.
I'm guessing it's more Anders Enger Jensen
It just makes me feel at home... So 80s! I'd love to know who's music it is!
....4:32 inspector cat controls your work!
Really a fluffy cute cat! :D
It’s so relaxing to watch you assemble stuff.
4:33 CAT: "Wait moment, I help you."
Very nice cat, i love cats
You’d get more likes if your grammer wasn’t shit.
@@Demonanimator No one likes you and you spelled grammar wrong.
@@Demonanimator g-r-a-m-m-a-r
I just love that cat
When in school, (1980) we were taught that TTL logic switching was very fast. I often wondered if anyone ever attempted to bulid a working computer out of only TTL chips...This a a good example and I didn't know these kits were available. Nice little project there, congratulations on completing it successfully.
In the 1960s into the 1970s, China made computers using just NOR Gates. That was the only TTL IC they made for awhile.
That first image was a mandrill. And that's a pretty famous image from back in the day to display color capability.
True, just like the parrot picture. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_16-bit_computer_hardware_palettes
I was thinking the same. As soon as I saw those images they were familiar to me from the 80's for showing off colour capabilities of computers. And I recall my mind being blown at those graphics at the time! :)
Who is Lena?
oh thx, never heard from
That assembly music is 10/10. 👌
re hash 👍🏼Thanks, you’ll find the full version here and on Bandcamp: soundcloud.com/eox-studios/tlg-seikos-theme
Complete album later this year along with the game itself hopefully. 😎🎷🎹
Is that a Yamaha DX-7 we're hearing?
Really awesome.
VWestlife Not actually, but a lot of older and newer FM based sounds: Yamaha TX-81z, XS-7, MotifRack, bunch of Roland synths/modules and ReFX Nexus2 with the FM expansions. :)
spot on with the kinda medley of yacht rock hooks. covers mid 70s through early 90's right there. bam.
A little tip for anyone soldering ICs: First solder every other pin and then come back and solder the rest. Old ICs are extremely sensitive to heat (and modern ICs aren't indestructible either) and this helps spread the heat, limiting the chance of damaging the chip.
This pcb make for hand soldering - pins warm wery fast - no need to owerheat iron.
Or just solder IC sockets instead. Then insert the ICs into the previously-soldered sockets.
@@coriscotupi, I was wondering if anyone else noticed that. I'd never seen someone shoving their ICs into sockets prior to soldering.
@@Milamberinx I guess in higher-frequency applications it might be interesting to have all components as close as possible to the circuit board ground plane, and also avoid the longer leads of the added sockets, but at 6MHz it would probably not matter. If I had bought the kit I'd have added sockets for the ICs.
First solder a diagonally opposite corner pair of leads to fix the package. You can see this has been done in the video, though it's not mentioned in the commentary. Then you can go round soldering alternate leads as suggested by hellterminator.
I love how you take the time to show what you do to solder and clip things in. I have no idea how any of this works so this is really good.
I've built this way ZX Spectrum 48K clone back in 1996 (produced by a local factory in exUSSR). Bought all bits and pieces on the open-air market. It was a lot of fun.
That Monster 6502 looks really sweet!
I think I just found a High School graduation present for my daughter. She's planning on studying EE in college and this would be a step up from the mostly simple electronics kits she's assembled and played with so far.
Daniel Bartholomew I would rather recommend you to have a look at the Ben eater computer here on RUclips. It's a phenomenal instruction Series on how to build a very basic computer. After you done this, you pretty much know how a computer really works. The drawback is, that you have to get the individual parts yourself, since there is no kit or so available. Also some parts are hard to find, and finally you can expect to also pay at least 150€ in parts. However, I am glad I did the journey.
When I graduated high school my dad died a year before from his fast paced lifestyle of booze, amphetamines, and liver damage. He got me unpaid child support payments.
EE postgraduate student here......don't :-/ . This isn't EE. It's just soldering together "stuff". Raspberri pi + arduino on the other hand....perhaps throw in an Analog Discovery by Diglent....that's stuff even a graduate Engineer will use all the time to test some stuff etc. Apparently they make interesting STM 32 boards now, much like arduino but tons more powerful. So many things out there which are just as fun, but so much more poweful and useful for years to come. Perhaps it's just me, but the more EE i learn, the less i care about stuff like this. It's cute, sure. But...mehhh....has no edge.
If home-brew hobby computer is what you want then the system Clickety Clack or Paul Law have built is much more interesting. Don't expect to play Crysis, but don't expect to be bored ether. They are objects of beauty.
Why not get an FPGA instead of a long soldering experiment? Significantly cheaper too.
That opening piece of music is, in a word, perfect.
Brilliant, Thank you! I think your criticism of the chip count being high is a little unfair. The board is an excellent teaching aid on how microprocessors are designed. Reducing the chip count by using an existing microprocessor (such as the Z80 or 6502) - would in my opinion - defeat the purpose of the kit. I'm amazed that the designers have got so much 'power' in their design. My homemade microprocessor which uses TTL chips, fits on a king-sized bed and has 1K of ram and 8 instructions.
Hahah that's cool
One of the reasons I enjoy your channel so much is how approachable you make all the items you discuss. You take great care to show detail in assembly or cleaning; you always give a tip for the beginner during the project and never come off as haughty; you clearly put a lot of effort into editing B-roll and close-ups.
The pictures shown in the picture view application are all famous computer pictures, for example the parrot is used in wikipedia's article about color palettes en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_color_palettes
It was lucky that you were able to get it Cat Scanned so early in the assembly process ;) .
Love the tense music on initial power up
Why do I have the urge to get some bread board and some electronics and experiment to my heart’s content.
Back in there 80's I was an the final testing for Perkin Elmer Computers this is how our computers where made. The processor was on 4 separate 15X30 inch board's with up to 4 more boards of memory, the memory controller and cache had their own boards.
The best part is that we could step the clock and follow each bit around the processor.
What you call the virtual computer we called the micro code which has the logic to control the hardware.
I would love one of these.
LYING SACK OF FUCKING WORTHLESS TRASH!!!!
This assembly it's soo relaxing, I love this king of video, congrats.
They needed to include a programming machine language monitor option just so people can try writing something for it.
I guess it depends on where you want to start. When I was building loose chips processors like that in the 1970s the first thing to do was make a cross-assembler on some other machine, then write the loader-debugger and push it down (somehow) to the target. At that point you could build a native assembler with the debugger, but again it is better to cross-compile that, it saves your sanity. Then you are set to go on the machine itself if you have IO working.
That all takes up extra ROM. Which is admittedly quite cheap these days. Perhaps have a "dual boot" mode.
I don't know why, but the left page at 1:49 looks like it was just loading when the piece of paper there fell down
Haha, I thought the same thing when I caught it out of the corner of my eye. Had to go back to see what really happened. :-D
yeah
same dude
Yeah I was just about to post a comment on that myself. I actually exported the video into premier and looked at it up really close. It defies any explanation of mine.
The menu comes with microprocessor.
it's just so satisfying to watch the assembly soldering process..
is it just me, or is there something inherently satisfying about watching a pin being soldered in ?
Yes, when you correctly solder something for the first time, it is wonderful to see how the solder flows into the joint. One of the younger members of the ham radio club liked it very much too.
I get so stressed when my projects doesn't get soldered properly.
@Fatih Kan I have faith in you! Clean the tip of the iron, add a little bit of solder to the iron, FIRMLY place the iron on the pin and the trace, wait a couple of seconds, add the solder the pin and the trace (not the iron), let it flow for a couple of seconds, remove iron.
I thought that too until my old iron from the USSR decided to start melting
I'm guessing the point of purchasing this would be simply for the enjoyment of building it.
Hreat conversation piece as well.
I'm more interested in that "Monster 6502" board at 1:12 ... C64s and Z80s and PCs just ain't the same magic as my old 8-bit Apple II+ (clone)
@@Pijawek yes, to get chicks!
It is easier to hatch some eggs, though.
Nee I think that it would be to build those logic doors by hand, I have't check the schematics but I guess that you have to build up the processor on the bus.
It’s a kit build like a model or Lego. No real purpose at this point other than for a hobby.
The pseudo scan line display makes my heart melt...
I want to frame that Monster 6502 on my wall.
Micros upgraded my whole thinking.
It's like a whole new sandbox once it starts to all click in your mind.
I can't stop talking about em because they are everywhere and in everything.
I love teaching how to use them.
when i was a kid, i listened to all kinds of 80's music, to the point where i got sick of listening to 80's music because i had heard it so much. hearing an original track with an 80's style in your videos is honestly really refreshing and its genuinely good music!
Not sure if David looks at his comments on his older videos, but I really love his videos. He's really gives out good detailed information on this restoration videos on how all the nooks and crannies works. I've never grew up with old Tech like this, since being a 90s kid, but I do remember my old Windows 95 machine.
Reminds me of a modern day Heath Kit computer.
6:01 Rubber feet as motherboard standoffs.
Bibasik7 been trying to remove small hair from my screen for 15 minutes. Was your avatar 😁😁
I actualy have a hair under my screen protector 😂
@@maze42d hell
5:00 damn the Blinkenlights joke lives on
the blinkenlights joke?
@@KungKras telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
@@vek7933 actually it's a term for diagnostic lights on old mainframes. it originated from a german/english mockup language joke dating back to IBM in the 50s.
ᵇˡᶦⁿᵏᵉⁿˡᶦᵍʰᵗˢ
"I hope that somebody builds my dream computer"
And that somebody turned out to be future 8-Bit Guy
This is one of the "Fine i will do it myself" moments.
@@crusaderanimation6967 Absolutely correct...
So in 50 years from now the 512-Bit Guy will create my dream computer?
@@notthatntg Actually not... The bit increase is driven by the need for memory. And by doubling the bits (which is an exponential increase!) the memory capacity is squared which is kind of 'exponential of exponential'. We haven't used full 64 bits in our 64-bit processors for addressing yet (just 40 of them, considering increasing one bit will double the supported memory, there is still a LONG way to go!). I'm not placing my bet on 128-bit computers becoming mainstream anytime soon, not to say 512-bits.
Who knows? Maybe Ben Eater will?
Wish I would’ve talked to my grandpa more about computers. He helped build the first one
I like the Blinkenlights label.
you should probably make a pinned post clarifying the snake part, so people wont leave any more comments about it lol
There's something utterly satisfying about watching you assemble a computer.
Let's work on a compiler for mainstream languages to the Gigatron machine language!
no ;)
Nah
How about first we work on a better hardware addressing system so you don't have to use GCL
Beautiful presentation! And kudos for your selection of 80s wait-muzak track. I trained at an electronics tech school in the early 90s. For the Digital phase, our lab was to build a 10-byte SRAM arithmetic logic unit. Just 10 LSI chips, a bank of 8 lever switches, 8 LEDs for the binary count, and single digital number display. Don't recall its clock speed, but it would heat up fast!
4:34 Inspection cat inspects your work.
The "Catlity" Assurance team just have arrived!
This Video Is So Awesome, Well Done!! 😃😄😃😄😍🥰😍🥰🤗🤗
His cat is old until 2007
Your intro music makes me HAPPY
It's all thanks to Anders Enger Jensen, here's the extended and slightly edited version of the intro music. ruclips.net/video/nj9syHGdZ-s/видео.html
6:30 That's a Mandrill - the most iconic image ever in computer graphics
Was just coming to verify this was reported. I remember it well on the Amiga in the demos? Or a sample in Deluxe Paint? I remember being amazed the first time I saw it and the other associated images on the Amiga.
Are ya telling me ya have never played Snake? :O
Yar supposed to eat all the dots, grow bigger and the challenge is to not hit any walls or parts of yourself whilst eating as much as possible.
Well, that's what I thought. But the game ended several times after growing 6 or 7 pixels long, even though I didn't hit any ways or myself.
Nokia 3310 cell phone days.
joseph burtulato I’m glad somebody else remembers the days when you had to pay extra for the “super cool and innovative” polyphonic ringtones
if you "eat" a pixel you have eaten before you die! so that might have happened.
Also, there seems to be a timer on the top left, that gets added to, when you eat green pixels.
You are the Bob Ross of computers.. i don't know anything about most of the things you are talking about, but you seem to make it so easy to understand. I just love it. It's relaxing. You have a smooth voice, always with a hint of humor and joy accompanying you making me really interested in reliving my old ms-dos/c64 days.. Thanks to you a lot!
learning about how transistors and stuff like that work in my electronics class was so much fun and i cant wait to do more this year
"The first game is Snake. I haven't really figured out the point of the game." [Nokia nerd gasps resound throughout the internets]
Christian Pasche it's different than the Nokia version: all the food is one the screen at once, the eaten food gets left behind as a trap, and he can't see the difference between green and orange because he's colorblind.
The computer is great and all but LOOK AT THAT CAT! HE'S SO CUTE!
Spicypicklez I knew if I scrolled down enough there’d be a comment about the 🐈 😂
who said its a "he"? i'm pretty sure its a "she"
Spicypickez, your comment means you're watching the wrong channel! 😜 heheheheh!
who said that's an "it"? i'm pretty sure that's a "carbon based lifeform"
I was a bit worried, a cat walking near 300C+ equipment and lead
Gigatron has released ROM v3 with tinyBASIC v2 and WozMon, and a PS/2 keyboard adapter for
the game controller port. Hopefully this makes the product more interesting to you. You can buy the ROM
and adapter on their website.
Damn man...I know quite a bit about this stuff. I built my first PC in 1994 cloned 486DX2 for Doo...I mean homework. I worked in the IT industry off and on for years. I build superguns for fun and work on old arcade cabs for fun. The reason I bring all of this up is...your knowledge is astounding. I'm learning new stuff and it's great. I know this video is at least a year old but bravo!
I love your videos. I stumbled upon your channel looking for good info on CPU technology, can't stop watching. I kick myself for giving up all the Commodore stuff I use to have!
Dude, you never played snake before? I'm confused how an 8-bit Guy such as yourself has missed the quintessential 8-bit game. That feels like an anomaly on such a large scale it would take the Gigatron seven and a half million years to process it.
Amberoot Audio what would you guess, like .42% percent of the time?
It's mentioned in a reply to another comment, but this version had an extra feature, where the snake leaves behind differently colored droppings after eating (which to be honest I didn't notice the first time around), but due to his colorblindness they all looked the same to him, so from his point of view some of the dots would randomly kill him, making the functioning of the game unclear.
A program snake game is small and simple.
The original Wang 2200 minicomputer was entirely TTL-logic-chip based, and was released in 1973, a couple of years after Intel started making microprocessors. I guess it took a few years for the concept of a microprocessor to catch on with computer manufacturers.
You couldn't put a lot of circuitry on a single chip back then. Chips were also extremely limited in how many pins they could have.
It absolutely made sense to keep building computers out of TTL chips for quite some time.
The original Intel 4004 microprocessor IC was released in 1971, so your events are a bit out of order.
Since this video was released, there is a ps2 keyboard interface included with the board. Which would indicate that it is evolving in some manner.
aka Pluggy McPlugface
Kinda funny to look back on him begging people to make his dream computer after seeing how that all ended up
In the 1980's, I worked for a company called Interspec, Inc., and one of the software wizards was Bill Mauchly, the son of J. William Mauchly, the inventor and builder of ENIAC at Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania Moore School of Engineering. He was just as much of a genius as his famous father, and it was my honor to have been able to work with him.
nice..
i find IC sockets to be very valuable on projects of this size
For me, no. It doesn't have a microprocessor because it IS a processor on its own. What it needs is a header to communicate with other devices, like a proper computer processor. That'd make it useful.
I agree. For the price we need to be able to tinker around with it. Who came up with the target audience of someone that is willing to solder it together but only play a few games on it? That doesn't make sense. This has so much more potential to be something interesting. It needs a big honkin GPIO on the back and an open source firmware so it can interface with anything. Someone will easily get BASIC running on it and then we're golden. Printers, scanners, keyboards, mice, webcams, speakers, LCDs, hard drives, networking, etc. etc.
Mark M I agree. Really you’re just getting a soldering project. You’re not gonna play these games for very long, It doesn’t have any GPIO pins, and you can’t program it on a the computer it’s self. This has so much more potential. But for $200 it just doesn’t make sense. Maybe a v2.0 will be better.
denimadept o
The ROM is in a DIP socket. It wouldn't be hard at all to buy an EEPROM and an external programmer as a replacement.
Good point about a breakout header. I could easily add that in a next run. You can already hook up wires directly to the output pins of the XOUT chip, but a header is much neater. The firmware and tool chain are open source and in github. The schematics will be open source soon. So far the focus has been on making the hardware ready for friends and early enthusiasts. It is still a hobby project for us. I'm working on a GCL programming tutorial as a next step with simple practical examples for learning. As David mentioned at the end, it is just a software upgrade away from being programmable on the thing itself. The Loader is a backdoor so it is not totally closed.
Love the 80's vibes music 🎶!
iwp112 Gaming I was stoked myself. Shadowrun!
I thought some of the music sounded like a Backstreet Boys song
I wonder what the name of the song is
Always fascinated with these 'computer on a board' proto-type thangs. Thanks for presenting this!
Racer!!?? Oh man!!! That just gave me some serious shivers on the retro spine!! I remember playing a game with excatly that background imagery, sound, look and feel on my Commodore C116 back when I was a little kid in the 80's!!!! Only that the car was red. there were some other opponents and it was called something else but racer.
And I loved the 80's style montage sequence in your video!
Reminds me of the game *Turbo* which was in the arcades in the early 80s made by SEGA.
ruclips.net/video/H-miyT1Vz1w/видео.html
Those graphics are awfully impressive for TTL. Images like those (USC ones) were common to showcase Atart ST, Amiga & Apple IIGS capabilities in the 80's
Check out the Alto from 1972 which also produced graphics on a bit mapped display and also had no single processor IC.
Xerox Alto arrives for restoration
ruclips.net/video/YupOC_6bfMI/видео.html
@@DandyDon1 I had a truckload of those once! I donated them to a BBS around 1993.
Load"$",8,1 ahhh that brings memories of my childhood back.
One of the dreadfull UI things that drove me away from Commodore machines. Couldn't they have at least made it remember the last device used?
PRESS PLAY ON TAPE
7:04 no no, it does have a central processing unit, a CPU. Its not a microprocessor, but the name CPU was used long before microprocessors were invented. They usually took shape of circuit boards just like the one you have of course.
I did my programming chops on a multiuser mini that had no microprocessor.
I built a mult- board, through hole, 4 bit computer (the Wombat). The CPU board had an ALU chip as its heart. Excuse, I was very young at the time and a 6800 was well North of $100.
I loved working on a PDP-8. Even have some of the Flip-Chip circuit cards. Eight opcodes would have crippled the PDP-8. It also had different group operate micro instructions. At DEC in 1969 I worked as a repair technician and one of the PDP-8 options I worked on was a vector graphics adapter called KV8I connected to a Tektronix video display. This system allowed me to play some of the first video games. Much more advanced that "Pong". A lunar landing game with the display showing the LEM, adjustable thrust coming out of the engine. Displays of miles to landing zone, speed, altitude, angle of thrust. You had to adjust angle and apply thrust and steering to land the LEM. Crashing happened often. And as you would try again you would fly over your previous landing attempts and see the crashed spacecraft. When you landed at the landing target, a little guy would climb down the ladder and go into a McDonalds, order a cheeseburger and a Coke, come out and go up ladder and then take off. End of game. Back to work now.
This put me in mind of Ben Eater's breadboard computer project. The cute thing about the breadboard computer is that once you understand how it works, it's not very hard to expand it, both in memory capacity and in number and type of instructions.
My dream homebrew computer would be a small, portable MS-DOS gaming machine with an Intel Quark (a very low power embedded CPU based on the Pentium P54C).
ahernandez094
Holy Crap, this!
1 Gigatron = 1,000 Megatrons
That sounds pretty powerful. Only drawback is it might refuse to work nicely with Prime numbers. That doesn't sound optimal.
Ah yes!! Das Blinkenlights (5:00)!!! Many a display of electronic apparatus at school open evenings would carry the following sign:
"Achtung! Der Machine ist nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengraben. Ist easy snappen der Springenwerk Blowenfusen, und Corkenpoppin mit Spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by die Dumpkofen. Die Rubbernecken Sightseeren keepen die hands in der Pockets. Relaxen und watchen das Blinkenlights."
According to Google Translate: "Attention! The machine is not for finger-punctured and mid-ditch. Easy snappen is the jumping factory Blowenfusen, and Corkenpoppin with top parking. Is not for work by the Dumpkofen. The Rubbernecken Sightseeren keepen the hands in the Pockets. Relax and watch the Blinkenlights"
Makes more sense in German. LOL
Nice one! Thanks.
Stuart of Blyth What the heck is that suppused to mean? It looks like like german but its not.
You're right, it looks like German but it's not. It's still understandable, though. Put it down to the English sense of humour.
I guess you could call this Denglish - a mixture of both languages. (Deutsch + English)
In 1983 I designed the digital portion of test equipment for our GE E2C radar. There was one guy in our group (a bunch of very smart engineers and scientists) who poo-poo'd constantly the fact it was microprocessor controlled. "The whole thing can be done with synchronous circuitry" he lamented multiple times. I was a new engineer, and it was not my call that it be micro-based. To this day I don't know how it could do everything it did, if it didn't have a micro. A lot *more* circuitry, no doubt.
This whole video and the music gave me such an 80’s feeling. It’s nice
To play snake you have to eat the dots without crashing into your tail or the walls.
That 80's background music makes me feel like I am in a mall.
4:32 - the reason I liked this video
Amazing, very nice design. And the designer knew his classics by labeling the LEDs "Blinkenlights" at 5:00. Good that there is a transparent cover to avoid gefingerpoken und mittengraben!
I too, love circuitry and motherboards.
I have the motherboard from my parent's first computer on a display stand in my room. It even has the original ram and pci modules, as well as the cpu. It has no use anymore, but it looks nice.
I'm super proud of it because it was the first computer I ever disassembled.
I just read your “Dream Computer” description, and I can see why it hasn’t been built. The 6502 was an incredibly bad CPU, and not very programmer friendly. It was like the instruction set was purposely designed to be a nightmare for programmers. It is also the reason why the original Apple computers were so limited. The only reason that NASA used it, is because it was the only CPU that came in a ceramic package that was certified for space.
If you want 8 bits, the Z80 is probably the best CPU from that era, and it’s pretty easy to page the memory to go beyond 64K. Also, the Z80 has a built-in refresh counter for dynamic memory.
The Motorola 6800 family I always thought was better because it fully separated the data pins from the address pins so there was no need to switch back and forth on the bus. Obviously most people thought otherwise.
Plus the Z80 can run any program built for the TI-84 series given sufficient power and TI-BASIC.
So wait, you, the “classic computer guy” have never heard of snake, a classic arcade game?
IIt is OK to be honest concerning what you are first encountering. No one person can have experienced every game ever made. Besides...maybe it was not widely available in the U.K.
G Henrickson he lives in Texas....so....
G Henrickson did you forget who you were watching and think you were on a techmoan video?
Also, Snake is like a classic game. It would be like saying you had never heard of centipede or galiga.
G Henrickson I live in the UK and I know it through Nokia phones etc. I don’t know if it was well known as an arcade game.
I did a double take when he said that. Dude can literally physically build a computer and has a retro tech youtube channel, but doesn't know Snake. I'm not knocking him, of course you don't know what you don't know. It is however a bit like hearing a car expert not know what fuzzy dice are.
Really interesting, and affordable - what a great teaching tool. Thanks for sharing. One benefit is no Class 1 Clean Room required, so you can have your cat with you when building. Thanks again.
4:29 snare sound that perfectly coincide with the chip slipping into the socket made my day :)
my ideal machine is a circuit board that let's you plug in processors and memory chips at different locations. you can create your own bus at the back of the board using parallel cables of various widths, then use github to develop an open source operating system for the most popular layouts.
If you are in to this sort of thing I would suggest you watch the creator talk about the creation: Search for "Hackerhotel 2018 Walter Belgers Gigatron" on youtube and you'll find his full hour long presentation. It's pretty interesting as they've done all the hard work in software instead of hardware. For hobbyists in electronics they've done a really great job.
Disclaimer: I'm a friend of Walter and have seen his presentation at Hacker hotel live.
As it uses TTL and has a virtual cpu implemented on top of lower level machine language, it looks like a little Xerox Alto...
Das Blinkenlights
You know this was created by geeks, for geeks, when . . .
Das Blinkenlights? Blinkenlights is not a german word at all.
L3 P3 "Das Blinkenlights" is old mainframe-era hacker slang, going back to the 1960s. Someone who worked on this kit is a seriously old-school.
(It originated on a poster deliberately written in terrible fake german telling people to keep "der mittenhands" off the computer and "watchen das blinkenlights" instead. Or something along those lines, it's been awhile since I've seen the text.)
Jason Blalock
ACHTUNG! Alles touristen und non-technischen peepers!
Das machine control is nicht fur gerfinger-poken und
mittengrabben. Oderwise is easy schnappen der springenwerk,
blowen fuse, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken.
Der machine is diggen by experten only. Is nicht fur
geverken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseenen
keepen das cotten picken hands in das pockets,
so relaxen und watchen das blinkenlights.
Also it's dutch doing a bad job of trying to sound german
Oof. It feels like when my sister rights facebook posts in her native Russian.
I was born in the early 1990s but this channel makes me feel nostalgic for the 80s an 70s :l
I absoloutly love the music at 2:39 - 4:45. man the bass is so good, this is a song that contains pure peace
It reminds me of the music they play in the waiting room at the dentist's office when I was a kid lol!
@Rob C No idea, but back then every tv studio had a few shelves of royalty free music libraries and also background effects you could use a charachter generator over. a lot of those mini infomercials used the hell out of them