The 8-Bit Computer That's Been Built By Hand 161
nk497 writes "Forget snapping a few components into a motherboard — programming enthusiast Jack Eisenmann has made his own PC from scratch. His Duo Adept, as he's named it, features 64KB of main memory, 256 bytes of RAM and, in total, 263 lines of code for his homemade OS. Sure, it can't run Crysis, but it does run a game he's written himself."
To bake an apple pie from scratch... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ever since Cosmos I can't take the phrase 'from scratch' seriously.
Also there is this TED video where a guy tries to build a toaster from raw materials...
not quite... (Score:1, Insightful)
...He still used a microprocessor in an integrated circuit. In college back in the 1980's some ubernerds built a 4004 with discrete transistors.
But still, i give this person _HUGE_ props, breadboarding a circuit that complex is very, very, VERY time consuming amount of debug. it would drive most people insane, literally, it would break their brains to try and debug this.
Re:Old school (Score:4, Insightful)
The hard part is finding the loose wire.
Re:not quite... (Score:4, Insightful)
It looks like he used actual 74xx series TTL chips to make the CPU. From the parts list he isn't doing microcoding, and isn't even using ALU or bit-slice MSI chips. It's the real thing.
Re:To bake an apple pie from scratch... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think people appreciate the "tech tree" (to use Starcraft parlance) you have to walk down to get to the simplest of modern household items. The toaster is a good example, but now imagine starting from zero -- you can't even start with iron ore, because you don't have any tools to mine it with! So start with banging rocks to get something sharp you can use to cut down a tree, so you can make a handle to make a stone axe. Hopefully this is enough to get some iron ore, but now you also need to make something to smelt your ore in, such as a bloomery. And for that, you need charcoal. And for that...
Basically, the TED guy making his toaster cheated by used modern tools to get his raw materials. And even with cheating, his toaster never toasted any bread.
The tech tree for a dollar store pocket calculator is staggering, let alone a Space Shuttle. I don't think many people are conscious of this when they toss that toaster in the garbage and spend $10 on a new one.