Build Your Own Computer 579
fixit! writes "This guy built his own CPU and VGA card. The site is in German. Here is the Babelfish translation of the site."
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which otherwise require harder thinking. -- Jerome Lettvin
Babelfish (Score:5, Funny)
My Hovercraft is full of eels!
I will not buy this *tobacconist's*, it is scratched.
Do you waaaaant...do you waaaaaant...to come back to my place, bouncy bouncy?
Drop your panties, Sir William; I cannot wait 'til lunchtime.
Re:Babelfish (Score:5, Funny)
Say no more, sqire, say no more.
Re:Babelfish (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Babelfish (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Babelfish (Score:4, Funny)
what have you got against Monty Python? looks to me like a pretty big troll. Have you come here for an argument?
Re:Babelfish (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot is abuse. Arguments are two doors down.
Re:Babelfish (Score:5, Funny)
Man: Well, I was told outside that...
Abuser: Don't give me that, you snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings!
Man: What?
Abuser: Shut your festering gob, you tit! Your type really makes me puke, you vacuous, coffee-nosed, maloderous, pervert!!!
Man: Look, I CAME HERE FOR AN ARGUMENT, I'm not going to just stand...!!
Abuser: OH, oh I'm sorry, but this is abuse.
Man: Oh, I see, well, that explains it.
Abuser: Ah yes, you want room 12A, Just along the corridor.
Man: Oh, Thank you very much. Sorry.
Abuser: Not at all.
Man: Thank You.
Abuser: (Under his breath) Stupid git!!
Re:Coffee-nosed??? (Score:3, Funny)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
All the news that's (Score:5, Funny)
fit to print! That's my slashdot!
Re:All the news that's (Score:2, Funny)
Re:All the news that's (Score:3, Informative)
Re:All the news that's (Score:5, Informative)
I am not sure why we americans use our silly middle-endian format. Seems to me little-to-big or big-to-little (like the Japanese with 2003-10-24) makes more sense than middle-little-big.
Isn't it great when some schmuck thinks he's coming up with a great joke? Ooooh, Aexia managed to make a dis on Slashdot's editing. Slashdot's mistakes are so few and far between that we can all just ignore that this one was just plain incorrect.
Re:All the news that's (Score:4, Informative)
Some folks will write the European format with slashes as well.
That would be because some countries use the Day month year format and slashes. Like Australia for example. 07/06/2003
Re:All the news that's (Score:3, Informative)
That would be because some countries use the Day month year format and slashes. Like Australia for example. 07/06/2003
And the UK.
Americans and formats... (Score:3)
Non-military people can't seem to understand a 24H-clock (Yes, I've had Americans ask me what 17.00 is in "normal" time).
Non-metric system (hey, even the *English* have figured out it's not so great).
Ah well, at least you drive on the right side of the road...
Kjella
Re:All the news that's (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also the ISO standard [cam.ac.uk] ordering, and is useful in filenames since sorting by name also sorts by date.
Re:All the news that's (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:All the news that's (Score:3, Funny)
Re:All the news that's (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately, a paralegal at SCO has just discovered that they own the copyrights to "Hexidecember."
Re:All the news that's (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe.
Re:All the news that's (Score:3, Funny)
the name of the thirteenth month is undecimber.
Hexadecember would be the 18th month, therefore.
Re:All the news that's (Score:3, Funny)
Following the tradition of submarine patents, you should keep your trademark
stuck in the middle of the registration process until the new name has been
widely adopted by industry and literature. Then you complete the pending
registration and claim licensing fees from just about everybody on earth!
Grrrrrr-reat!
Re:All the news that's (Score:3, Funny)
'correctly'? (Score:3, Insightful)
The US standard makes sense in some ways: mm/dd is what you commonly write, with an implicit year (though this used to be more true in the past). This is in the normal sense-making big-endian format (rather than the crazy European little-endian format). Then when you want to denote the year explicitly you tack it into the end. This
Re:All the news that's (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually Japan has "traditionally" used, and still often uses, "[Emperor name] [year of emperor's reign]" as their common date format. You can't describe future dates without guessing how long the emperor will live, and you have to know how many years each emperor lived in order to count back very far. To further complicate things, the year that an emperor dies has two descriptions, e.g. Showa 64 is the same as Heisei 1.
They've probably started adopting the YYYY-MM-DD because that's the ISO 8601 international standard date format. I'd encourage everyone to get into the habit of using it. It sorts nicely, it's language independent, and there is less opportunity for ambiguity. When you see "03/04/02" you have to wonder whether it's American or European, but "2003-04-02" can only mean 2 April 2003. Ok, I suppose some total idiot could think it was 4 February 2003, but that would be as wholly illogical as the common American date format of MM/DD/YY.
Smarch! (Score:3, Funny)
Voice-Over (Marge) "It was the thirteenth hour of the thirteenth day of the thirteenth month... we were meeting to discuss the misprint in the school calendars"
Homer (Grumbling): "...Lousy smarch weather..."
Well, at least he is honest with himself (Score:2)
Babelfish has a way to go yet ... (Score:5, Funny)
Say that 3 times fast. Go ahead, I dare ya.
The site is short on (understandable) details, but the thing apparently runs at a blistering 5Mhz which happens to be 5Mhz faster than anything I could ever build. Impressive, but I don't think AMD and Intel should be worried just yet. Via
If you liked that... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hieliche Schisse! (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember playing with this stuff in VLSI. It's quite another thing to actually lay it out on hardware and wire the sucker up. He designed his own ALU, register paths, everything. God, and I can barly find time to play with my Mindstorms kit.
Macht Spass Jung!
Re:Hieliche Schisse! (Score:3, Funny)
But does it run Linux!?!? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But does it run Linux!?!? (Score:2)
I don't think it has nearly enough RAM, 256 opcodes, and 5 registers.
Now, Minix on the other hand might be right up this guy's alley.
Re:But does it run Linux!?!? (Score:2)
I'm picking through the original German. He actually has an emulator for the system. Technically you could run it under linux, and then modify it to the point that it would run Linux itself, and then run linux under it (at least in simulation.)
By that point some guy in a black trenchcoat will be sitting in a room with a red and a blue pill for you to take...
Re:But does it run Linux!?!? (Score:3, Funny)
Technology moves ahead. (Score:5, Funny)
The real translation: (Score:2, Troll)
Re:The real translation: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The real translation: (Score:3, Insightful)
I know I'm kind of babeling here, but telling a person who hacks up something like this that "They have too much time on their hands" is a very destructive comment. If I had heard that more when I was younger I would probably be flipping burgers now in
Apple ][ (Score:2, Insightful)
Didn't steve wozniack use the 6502 back when he made the apple ][. Hell overall, i bet you steve used less chips too. With the technology we have today i'm sure steve could've designed an insane system for what it cost him back then.
Ahhh, (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ahhh, (Score:5, Funny)
"And now, I vill svitch on mein home made Cathode-ray tube..."
*BOOM!*
"ARGH!! mien eyes! mein eyes!"
Re:Ahhh, (Score:5, Funny)
Real Germans only speak in accented english, the German language itself is only a urban legend.
Re:Ahhh, (Score:4, Informative)
If you compare (early) midevel English and Germany texts side by side it is clearly visible that Germany and English are nothing but two dialects of the same language.
Maybe it was comparable to today somebody coming from Texas speaking to somebody coming from NY or someone from Hamburg talking to someonefrom Munich.
Yeah,,, (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah,,, (Score:5, Funny)
NetBSD? (Score:5, Funny)
If the author is reading this: Good job; I hope to be able to do that some day.
Re:NetBSD? (Score:2)
Re:NetBSD? (Score:5, Funny)
That will bring totally new meaning to downloading patches.
Give the guy a break! (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember dreaming of building cards to hook to an S100 bus, including a Z-80 CPU with a ROM and redirection logic.
I mean, I can see how things change. It's kind of interesting to see a whole generation of hardware hackers think in terms of gate arrays, or their children. Who never smelt solder.
Re:Give the guy a break! (Score:2)
He used 50 of the 74xx IC series chips to build this thing. It's hardly an example of how things change, it's an example of how things were!
It would take a little less than a month to whip up what he did using an HDL and a small FPGA.
So what's so special? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So what's so special? (Score:2)
You have to also design an operating system and a basic interpretter for your hardware?
Re:So what's so special? (Score:2)
For All You "Does it run Linux folks" (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, most of us that went through college engineering programs did something similar to this at one time. Whether it was building a computer out of parts or designing and architecture in VHDL and throwing it with some assembly code on an FPGA. It is a good way to learn how architectures really work.
Puts me to shame... (Score:2)
Re:Puts me to shame... (Score:2)
You used 128 mode and BASIC? Slacker...
I used 64 mode (most of my friends still had 64s, I really didn't have a use for the extra memory, and it ran faster) and wrote in machine language--not assembly... I didn't know that there was such a thing as an assembler at the time. I had an Apple II CPU manual that was reasonably close enough to the 64 to get the opcodes right, the memory map from the back of the 128 manual, and a hand-copied lis
Not bad... (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, though, I like that he added the LCD status display. Most people would just use the video for display, but after having worked on boxes with those on board LCDs for status info, I've learned to love em.
Re:Not bad... (Score:2)
I k
go camping. (Score:5, Funny)
I Imagine that before the s'mores are grilled (graham crackers, hershey bars & marshmallows) he will have a king sized bed made out of duck down, a T.V. made out of acorns, and an air conditioner made out of discarded spam cans.
Wonder if he is single? I have a lovely niece.
What am I saying? Of course he is single.
I can make a computer (Score:4, Funny)
Unfortunately this is Slashdot, so I have all the time in the world, but no woman
Re:I can make a computer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I can make a computer (Score:5, Funny)
Violation (Score:4, Funny)
I did some of this on paper (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a lot of 7400 series TTL manuals handy however, and the reading the PDP manuals gave me a lot of hints as to what I wanted in my (then) dream CPU - a 16 bit instruction set, with lots of general purpose registers, lots of fancy addressing modes, a hardware multiplier/divider, and a much larger address space so I could run a real compiler - not that interpretive BASIC crap that was all the rage back then. (I kind of knew that even if I could bring my vision to life, writing a decent compiler would be even tougher than building the CPU, but one battle at a time....) I worked out the instruction set, and designed most of the ALU, although I got stuck on trying to make the divider work. I was also somewhat disappointed in that it appeared I wouldn't be able to get the damned thing to go any faster than about 12 MHz, the TTL wouldn't work any faster. I was also stuck on what to do for memory.
I couldn't go much beyond a paper design, the parts would have cost me close to $1000, not including the UV eraser and the PROM programmers. But it was still educational. I dropped the project for good when I saw the first 68000 datasheet. Here was the CPU I had been trying to design for the past 3 or 4 years. It had an nice instruction set a lot like the PDP, plenty of registers, plenty of indexed addressing modes, and a hardware integer multiplier/divider. In 1984 I bought my first "real" computer, a 128K "thin" Mac, which sported a 6MHz 68000, and to this day, still resides in my parents closet!
(The flyback xfmr burned out years ago, a common problem with the original macs)
Not too far out--really! (Score:5, Interesting)
In all the time I spent there, that was one of the most interesting things I've ever done. Luckily for us, we didn't have to design and etch the boards, but we did have to come up with the microcode and burn it into EPROMs as well as solder a bunch of components and IC sockets onto said board. We also had to write an assembler for it as well and of course the whole thing had to work if you wanted to pass the course!
It was only capable of handling 4 bits at a time and was manually clocked (keep flipping faster! I need those spreadsheet values by tomorrow!) but by God the thing actually worked. And you could actually understand how it worked.
Even though you could conceivably expand the thing to 32 or 64 bits, I can't imagine why anyone would. Except of course if you're living in a post-apocalyptic (or post NGSCB) world where you can't walk into a store and buy one...
-- Shamus
This space for rent! EZ terms!
Re:Not too far out--really! (Score:3, Informative)
-- Shamus
This space for rent! EZ terms!
DIY adders (Score:3, Interesting)
I've designed a few CPUs back when I was in college, using 74xx ALUs, etc. Never acutally implemented one, though a friend did. What I have done is buy a bunch of used relays and had my teen-age children build full adders with them. Now that's fun. You get a real sense of accomplishment when you flip some switches, listen to the relays click, and see a row of light bulbs display the sum.
Slashdotted (Score:3, Funny)
Forbidden
You don't have by mission ton of ACCESS/mycpu g.htm on this servers.
No, I don't have a ton of access - not even by mission.
This are (could be?) the times... (Score:5, Informative)
No more fiddling with a bunch of TTL/CMOS logic chips. You can get a programmable CPLD with 800 logic gates for 99 us cents (e.g. from xilinx). Free design software (also said to be running under linux with wine) is available too. 800 gates is enough for some really nice projects. In circuit programmable.
Or try a cheap controller. For example AVR RISC. They are fast, they are powerful, they can be programmed with a gcc-variant. Just take the chips a oscillator and go. Programmable with a cheap parport interface. Oh, and the best is the price: Starting at US$2.
Soldering it on a experimental board? Maybe, but what about designing a pcb? Take EAGLE as layout software (freeware version for non commercial use up to 1/2 eurocard, enough for some decent design). Get the pcb fabricated for example in hungary (US$21 for a whole eurocard, all inclusive).
So i hope we will see a return of home development. It is getting even cheaper and more powerful. I just read an announcement for a new FPGA with 1 million (!) gates which target price is under US$20. This is enough to even construct your own CPU. Wouldn't that be fun and educative?
So see the possibilities and go out and design something. And probably make the design available under some open license. The time has never been better before.
Slashdotted translation! (Score:4, Funny)
which roughly translates to: all your base are belong to slashdot
Other FPGA CPU projects (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/pdp_fpga.html [aracnet.com]
Michael Sokolov is rumored to be working on a FPGA VAX-inspired CPU with intent to fab eventually.
Re:big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, in this day and age, anything this clueful deserves a brownie point or two. If you think otherwise, try working around all the A+ certified ijits (that I call coworkers) for 8 hours.
Re:big deal (Score:5, Funny)
Re:big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
Designing a CPU is not difficult. What IS difficult, is to design something
sophisticated like a Pentium-4. But a simple CPU can be done in 1-2 days.
Basically, when you already know a hardware language like VHDL or Verilog,
and know how a CPU works in general, it's just as simple as designing a
software virtual machine (like JAVA) or an interpreted tokenized language
(like some BASIC dialects).
The main problem with self-designed CPUs is that you don't have any support
tool chain. You have to write your own assembler (and possibly disassembler),
or adapt one of those meta-assemblers (eg XCASM). And you have to write
your own C compiler, or port one of the free ones (LCC or GCC), if you want
to do larger projects with your CPU.
In most cases it is not worth the hassle to design your own CPU, because
recently the FPGA vendors started to give out CPUs for free (eg NIOS, or
MicroBlaze/PicoBlaze) with free toolchain support (usually GCC).
When you start a CPU design TODAY, it's usually for one of these reasons:
- educational (many textbooks design a CPU while teaching logic)
- prototype a new revolutionary approach (like eg PACT's XPP)
- you need a little bit more than a statemachine, but the smallest "real"
CPU is already too big for you (in this case, the toolchain problem is
non-existant - you can code the "firmware" manually)
Marc
Re:big deal (Score:4, Funny)
But I bet you know when your power bill arrives :-)
Re:big deal (Score:5, Funny)
And how many women do you have at home? That's what I thought.
Re:How many platforms are in a notebook factor? (Score:3, Informative)
been a commercial for-profit venture to qualify?
Re:How many platforms are in a notebook factor? (Score:5, Informative)
1)The Sparcbook and ultrabooks are Solaris based on sparc hardware
2)The PrecisionBook uses the PA-7300LC processor and runs HP unix
3)Don't forget the original GRiD Compass 1100, running GRiD-OS. That was the very first hinged laptop.
http://www.total.net/~hrothgar/museum/Compass/
Magnetic bubbles for storage yummy
Now moving on to laptops NOT made of magnesium
4) Casio FP-200 , was primarily a spreadsheet machine and ran a built-in software package called CETL (Casio Easy Table Language), a VisiCalc-like language The FP-200 was built around a CMOS version of the Z80 and has 32K of ROM and 8K of RAM, expandable to 32K. The FP-200 has an 8-line X 20 character display. For graphics, 64 X 160 pixels can be individually addressed. Had a full sized keyboard
5) WorkSlate from Convergent Technologies, was another spreadsheet machine, and all the software packages on the WorkSlate were adaptations of the basic spreadsheet program. The WorkSlate used a CMOS version of the 6800 The display on the WorkSlate had 16 lines by 42 characters. Some lines were devoted to status indicators, headings, and formulae; as a result, about 11 by 5 cells of a spreadsheet are visible at a time.
6) The Teleram 3000 notebook portable, weighing in at nine pounds. Completely standard keyboard; four-line by 80-character display; 128K of internal bubble memory (expandable to 256K); and CP/M operating system.
7) The Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100, actually made by Kyoto Ceramics , the same company that makes Yashica and Contax cameras and those cool ceramic knives. The Model 100 uses a CMOS version of the Z80 running at 2.5 MHz.
7.5) The NEC PC-8201 twin of the Radio Shack Model 100.. The 8201 was born six months or so earlier in Japan and is a somewhat different version of the Kyoto Ceramics original.
8) The Epson HX-20 was the first true notebook size computer introduced. The HX-20 uses a CMOS version of the Z80 mpu. It has 32K of ROM and 16K of RAM, expandable to 32K with an external module. Mass storage is provided in the form of a built-in microcassette recorder and a built-in printer and a NiCad rechargeable battery that provides 50 hours of use
9) The MicroOffice RoadRunner uses a CMOS version of the Z80 mpu and has 16K of ROM and 48K of RAM. Four memory cartridge slots are found over the keyboard for extra RAM memory and ROM software cartridges. These are addressed from the CP/M-compatible operating system as devices A through D Also built in is a schedule organizer, name/address organizer Word processing, Microsoft Basic, and Sorcim SuperCalc. More packages are promised in the future.
10) Xerox 1810 notebook portable designed by Sunrise Systems with a CMOS version of the Z80 with 32K of ROM and 16K of RAM, expandable to 65K.
11) Gavilan It had a touch pad below the display in 1983!!! And it had windows, a trash basket and icons before the Mac, (but after the Lisa) !
The Gavilan had a 16-bit 8088 cpu, 48K of ROM, and 64K and RAM, expandable with up to four 32K plug-in capsules of blank memory or applications software packages. Also built in was a 3 inch , 320K Hitachi floppy disk drive. ( remember those? looked just like a 5.25 or 8 inch floppy ) and an optional snap-on printer !
Re:big deal (Score:5, Interesting)
As an Undergrad in EE I designed a hell of a lot of CPU's. I never built one. In the lab we used the old trusty Motorola 68000 series. Must have been Drexel's 10 week terms or something. LOL
Re:big deal (Score:3, Insightful)
As an Undergrad Comp Eng, I've designed and implemented (some 74xx ICs + several PALs) a similar, smaller-scale design in a 4-week lab project.
The only impressive thing about his cpu is the fact that he only used the 74xx series and eproms. Impressive, because routing between 50+ ICs is a bitch
Re:big deal (Score:5, Interesting)
But doing it is not new...
In 1980 as class project, my lab partner and I took 20 chips and built a 4 bit computer in about 3 hours. The instruction set was based on the 4 bit ALU. We were trying to prove the possiblity of new course for the collage. The course was to take people who wanted to be computer science to get their hands dirty and build a machine. Also taught alot about low and high logic.
My first emulator was for a Z-80A processor and was written in tiny basic on Attena 8085 machine. It had three programs, an editor, a 1-2-3 compiler and the emulator. My college advisor (was also one of the profs in mathimatics and computers) had hours of fun with it.
Aaah, the wonders of BASIC (and boredom) (Score:3, Informative)
Heh. Back in high school we all had TI-83's. You can do a lot with 28k and BASIC given enough mind-numbing general classes and a spot near the back of the room. We got to the point where we could program those things blindfolded (those keypads were a tad awkward) One friend reimplemented Oregon Trail. Another did a 3D plotter and a window manager frontend with app launching. Course, whe
Re:Aaah, the wonders of BASIC (and boredom) (Score:5, Funny)
You think you had it bad with a TI-83? We would 'ave dreamed of having a TI-83! Our school had just one computer with only one bit of memory, and the only operation it could perform was XOR. We had to pass it around the class and hope that no one set the bit before it got to us!
We had to carve the stone input decks with our bare hands, then to reboot we'd have to stick the computer into a 240Volt socket and close the connection with our bare tongues!
But you tell that to kids these days, and they won't believe you.
Re:big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
So what you meant to say was Undergrads at most universites design their own cpus. Using your definition I could go build another Great Pyramid. I just wouldn't have to actually BUILD it, just draw some pictures.
Re:big deal (Score:3, Informative)
He did much more than just "design a CPU." He also built his own operating system and a basic interpretter.
Yep, big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
That said... It is pretty hard, and is something to be proud of. This guy's accomplishment is going past a basic fetch-ALU-store implementation and actually building something useful on top. Also, his documentation is superb. This last is a jewel beyond price in professional IT.
Making your own CPU has great pedagogical value too
Re:big deal (Score:3, Insightful)
CPU my ass. You couldn't design a fucking adder. And who modded this tripe informative anyway?
Re:Karma Whore (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks for the karma whoring, at any rate.
Language lessons (Score:5, Funny)
Bilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks three languages?
Trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks only one language?
An American, damnit.
Besides, we all know from Star Trek that when we meet the aliens, that's what they'll all be speaking anyway.
Re:Language lessons (Score:5, Funny)
That is of course assuming that aliens speak at all. Imagine if aliens communicated through pigment changes in the skin, or interpretive dance. I can see the aliens now performing, what looks like to us a Marcel Marceau routine, but actually is saying "Take me to your leader."
Re:Karma Whore (Score:2)
(Tumbleweed.)
Well it was news to me!
Re:Cool for the geek factor... (Score:3)
Re:too bad (Score:2)
The results are in: Most Ignorant Post Ever! (Score:2)
Me, I'd love to design my own little CPU, if I could even figure out how to manage even the
Re:too bad (Score:5, Funny)
Re:too bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:too bad (Score:2)
Re:And the point? (Score:5, Insightful)