A Replica of the First 4004 Calculator 63
mcpublic writes "For the 37th anniversary of Intel's 4004, the world's first off-the-shelf, customer-programmable microprocessor, vintage computer enthusiast Bill Kotaska has successfully built a replica of Busicom's historic 141-PF printing calculator using vintage Intel chips. Decades before the ubiquitous 'Intel inside' sticker, Japanese calculator maker Busicom introduced the first product ever built around an Intel microprocessor. Bill's homebrew replica includes a rare Shinshu Seiki Model-102 drum printer and runs firmware extracted from the original Busicom ROMs. Schematics and photos of his re-creation are available at the unofficial 4004 web site, along with Tim McNerney's new PIC-based emulator of the Model-102 printer. The site includes the Busicom 'source code,' 4004 details, interactive simulators, and other goodies for students, engineers, and computer historians." We discussed the 36th 4004 anniversary project here last year.
Re:Looks complicated (Score:5, Interesting)
The architecture diagram is actually so simple...each rectangle there is representing at most ~30 transistors.
Take a random rectangle of the current whatever chips architecture diagram, even for the simple one likes microcontroller, each rectangle is more complicated than the whole 4004 diagram there.
The final project of 2*14 weeks (semester) IC design course could easily be as complex as the 4004.
I have to admit it's like rocket science 35~40 years ago though. I actually admire that they could actually come up with that...imagine that they could actually be using pencil and ruler to draw the schematic and layout.
Re:Prior to this... (Score:2, Interesting)
I've written code that runs at 32KHz. It's a great way to run code that never, ever, shuts down off a coin battery for a few years.