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.
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
Silicon Chip Magazine ran a competition in 2021 to build a noughts-and-crosses machine based on one that Australian electronics legend Dick Smith built from parts from an electromechanical phone exchange. They ran a series of articles on it, including an electromechanical one of which unfortunately only the first page is available online although it gives you an idea: https://www.siliconchip.com.au/Issue/SC/2024/March/Electrome.... If you can find the articles there's a lot of detail in them on how to do it with minimum circuitry. Someone had also done it with relays a few years before Dick Smith, https://www.vintagecomputer.net/cisc367/Radio%20Electronics%.... There's an even earlier one very briefly mentioned in this 1949 newsreel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlNxBb_27CA
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.
12 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 33.3 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_Educable_Noughts_and_...
(A spaceman uses a pet that plays with beads to simulate not being temporarily incapacitated by a 'mind beam' attack.)
Thank you.
"Great Tinkertoy Computer" - https://www.science20.com/brain_candyfeed_your_mind/great_ti...
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.