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Intel’s fabrication plants can churn out hundreds of thousands of processor chips a day. But what does it take to handcraft a single 8-bit CPU and a computer? Give or take 18 months, about $1,000 and 1,253 pieces of wire.
Steve Chamberlin, a Belmont, California, videogame developer by day, set out on a quest to custom design and build his own 8-bit computer. The homebrew CPU would be called Big Mess of Wires or BMOW. Despite its name, it is a painstakingly created work of art.
The BMOW is closest in design to the MOS Technology 6502 processor used in the Apple II, Commodore 64 and early Atari videogame consoles. Chamberlin designed his CPU to have three 8-bit data registers, a 24-bit address size and 12 addressing modes. It took him about a year and a half from design to finish. Almost all the components come from the 1970s- and 1980s-era technology.
The BMOW isn’t just a CPU. Chamberlin added a keyboard input, an LCD output that shows a strip of text, a USB connection, three-voice audio, and VGA video output to turn it into a functioning computer.
Interesting but not amazing…
Allot of hobbiests have done this sort of thing since the 70′s. I have personally known guys who have built machines (computers from scratch Z80, 6502, 8080 etc…) and were fully functional and not just for hobby use, but were used to perform a specific task, these were programmed with CPM… anyhow, the art of this type of ability is slowly dying, everything is micro and nano level so to be able to hold the bits in our hand and build something is simply amazing to some. The Board he used is a prototype card used for the intel Multibus-II. A bus and system not too popular, although it was used by industry for a short while. And these were all stand alone single board computers as well. I myself have designed and built an interface card that had 16bit input and output capability for the old ISA-Slot (my design) from scratch and it was literally thousands of wire wrapped components…but it worked…
Hobbiest of this nature are a dying breed…
Good On Ya mate for building it… but its kinda all been done before…..
Like Les Said….
Look at this…!!!
http://freenet-homepage.de/dieter.02/mt15.htm
reminds me of college days lol fun stuff to do
Shold have gone golfing and called Intel or AMD.
Either he has a very patient wife, he’s very single or he’s a gay nerd.
Good, maybe he can help GM redesign the Volt.
Wow! but I’m gonna wait for the mobile version!
not a true hack till you can run DOOM on it.
>># 10 ummmm said,
Dont you mean “DIY”? Or does DYI mean something the rest of us don’t?<<
After that much time, no friends, no wife, no outside fun, no …etc
ergo: DYI= Do Yourself In