Awesome DYI: Guy builds his own CPU!

Published on May 30th, 2009

Posted by SN in General, Technology, computers, strange, tech

(Click photo to enlarge.)

Wired – May 28, 2009:

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.

29 users responded in " Awesome DYI: Guy builds his own CPU! "

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# 1 WaynePhilips said, on May 30th, 2009 at 11:03 am

My wife knits and this guy makes his own computer, these are two things I don’t understand. All I know is that both of these preoccupations mean that nobody is getting laid.

# 2 OvenMaster said, on May 30th, 2009 at 11:22 am

What, just one core?

# 3 Jägermeister said, on May 30th, 2009 at 11:23 am

Nice feat.

# 4 Mr. Fusion said, on May 30th, 2009 at 11:27 am

A little more intensive than knitting. Maybe someone can get laid as a reward for completing the project.

I know this is above my talents.

# 5 qb said, on May 30th, 2009 at 11:39 am

Now this is a geek. I wholeheartedly approve.

# 6 deowll said, on May 30th, 2009 at 11:51 am

Um so if he can find some floopy drives this thing might run Apple II software?

# 7 mr show said, on May 30th, 2009 at 12:20 pm

Neat but will it run Linux?

# 8 The Seed said, on May 30th, 2009 at 12:32 pm

Steve’s replacement.

# 9 faxon said, on May 30th, 2009 at 12:39 pm

Excellent. This is impressive. Make Magazine constantly has such people and their creations. There have been a few home made computers that were even more impressive than just this cpu. Relays, for instance.

# 10 ummmm said, on May 30th, 2009 at 2:01 pm

Dont you mean “DIY”? Or does DYI mean something the rest of us don’t?

# 11 sargasso said, on May 30th, 2009 at 2:08 pm

I once used a wirewrap tool to build a video card, actually a screen dumper for the old NOAA infrared polar orbit receiver facsimile output images. I’ve worn glasses ever since. Those wires are silver coated, high purity copper, and they don’t like finger prints.

# 12 Mr Diesel said, on May 30th, 2009 at 3:29 pm

The first computer I worked on in the Navy looked like this. It was used in computerized test equipment for the F14.

I was trained to troubleshoot failures down to the chip across an entire chassis of this things.

30 year old technology…………

# 13 Winston said, on May 30th, 2009 at 5:43 pm

Very neat, but not the first. People have been doing this sort of thing for years.

Here’s an Intel 4004 built with discrete surface mount components:

http://www.4004.com/

# 14 Zybch said, on May 30th, 2009 at 5:44 pm

This is NOT a CPU. hes just used a wirewrap system to link together the actual ICs.
If it were an actual CPU it would not only be somewhat bigger but have thousands of transistors and stuff.
This is no different from buying an electronics kit from radioshack with all the hard work already done and the part just needing to be linked rather than made from scratch.

# 15 Les said, on May 30th, 2009 at 6:07 pm

Nice, but this guy built one from TRANSISTORS, no ICs. 3000 transistors.
http://freenet-homepage.de/dieter.02/mt15.htm

# 16 Les said, on May 30th, 2009 at 6:15 pm

“This is NOT a CPU” I think it’s a CPU. Making a CPU from small scale logic is a huge task. Designing an instruction decoder for something resembling a 6502 is a significant project.

I have designed and built many computers from the chip level, a task much less complicated than what this guy did, but even that is orders of magnitude more involved than building a kit from radio shack.

I am reminded of the saying, “If you are not worried, you don’t understand the problem.”

# 17 Paul Camp said, on May 30th, 2009 at 8:41 pm

Do You Its…. Driving Your Intox….

Hmmmmmmmmmmm. . . .

Oh, of course. The Democratic Youth Initiative, from Croatia.

No wait. What?

# 18 NancyDisgrace said, on May 30th, 2009 at 8:45 pm

Follow the link back to the guys blog. This is
a CPU. When was the last time you went to radioshack for a kit and when you opened the
box it said “Instructions : design it yourself”
And no printed circuit. “Here is 100 feet of wire-wrap wire. Knock yourself out.”

# 19 Zybch said, on May 30th, 2009 at 10:57 pm

#18 & #16 – I never said it wasn’t impressive, just that it wasn’t a CPU.

# 20 brm said, on May 30th, 2009 at 11:06 pm

#14:

“This is NOT a CPU. hes just used a wirewrap system to link together the actual ICs.
If it were an actual CPU it would not only be somewhat bigger but have thousands of transistors and stuff.”

This is NOT a CPU. It’s just thousands of transistors and stuff. You didn’t design a mask and etch it on a wafer.

This is NOT a CPU. It’s just an etching on a wafer. You didn’t place each atom by hand.

and on and on.

It reads instructions from memory and executes them? It’s a CPU.

# 21 sims-r-us said, on May 31st, 2009 at 2:50 am

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…..

# 22 Sims-R-us said, on May 31st, 2009 at 3:04 am

Like Les Said….

Look at this…!!!

http://freenet-homepage.de/dieter.02/mt15.htm

# 23 The0ne said, on May 31st, 2009 at 5:49 am

reminds me of college days lol fun stuff to do

# 24 Lou said, on May 31st, 2009 at 9:25 am

Shold have gone golfing and called Intel or AMD.

# 25 Angel H. Wong said, on May 31st, 2009 at 12:34 pm

Either he has a very patient wife, he’s very single or he’s a gay nerd.

# 26 Bill Gram-Reefer said, on May 31st, 2009 at 8:02 pm

Good, maybe he can help GM redesign the Volt.

# 27 pwuk said, on June 1st, 2009 at 12:07 pm

Wow! but I’m gonna wait for the mobile version!

# 28 FRAGaLOT said, on June 1st, 2009 at 12:10 pm

not a true hack till you can run DOOM on it.

# 29 Rob (AU) said, on June 15th, 2009 at 1:04 am

>># 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

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