<story><title>High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch</title><url>http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/wow-high-school-grad-builds-8-bit-computer-from-scratch-complete-with-custom-os-and-pong/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zeteo</author><text>By some definition of &quot;scratch&quot;, we&apos;ve also built 8-bit computers from scratch in my Electronics class. My respect for this student&apos;s accomplishment is proportional to how much of the processor he has designed and built himself; opcode design and management is a highly nontrivial task. On the other hand, if he has built the processor from pre-existing schematics, the accomplishment simply shows a steady soldering hand and good mental endurance.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JonnieCache</author><text>I think you guys should look a little closer before writing him off.&lt;p&gt;He pumped the OS in one bit at a time using DIP switches, wrote his own hex editor, and then wrote his own assembler and &lt;i&gt;emulator&lt;/i&gt;, in javascript/canvas: &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mac.com/teisenmann/iWeb/adeptpage/adept_compiler.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://web.mac.com/teisenmann/iWeb/adeptpage/adept_compiler....&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The OS code is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mac.com/teisenmann/iWeb/adeptpage/DUO_OS.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://web.mac.com/teisenmann/iWeb/adeptpage/DUO_OS.txt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Run it through the emulator, it works.&lt;p&gt;Definitely not just a bit of light soldering...</text></comment>
<story><title>High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch</title><url>http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/wow-high-school-grad-builds-8-bit-computer-from-scratch-complete-with-custom-os-and-pong/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zeteo</author><text>By some definition of &quot;scratch&quot;, we&apos;ve also built 8-bit computers from scratch in my Electronics class. My respect for this student&apos;s accomplishment is proportional to how much of the processor he has designed and built himself; opcode design and management is a highly nontrivial task. On the other hand, if he has built the processor from pre-existing schematics, the accomplishment simply shows a steady soldering hand and good mental endurance.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stan_rogers</author><text>No, the processor appears to be constructed from 74LSxxx TTL logic chips. The memory is 2x32KB off-the-shelf SRAM units, but there comes a point where building things out of quad J-K flip-flops just becomes an exercise in patience and unnecessary spending. The registers are FFs, why make all of the memory that way? Just to say you did it? It doesn&apos;t add to the learning experience, just the drudgery.</text></comment>