DIY CPU Demo'd Running Minix 313
DeviceGuru writes "Bill Buzbee offered the first public demonstration of the open-source Minix OS — a cousin of Linux — running on his homebrew minicomputer, the Magic-1, at the Vintage Computer Festival in Mountain View, Calif. The Magic-1 minicomputer is built with 74-series TTL ICs using wire-wrap construction, and implements a homebrew, 8086-like ISA. Rather than using a commercial microprocessor, Buzbee created his own microcoded CPU that runs at 4.09 MHz, and is in the same ballpark as an old 8086 in performance and capabilities. The CPU has a 22-bit physical address bus and an 8-bit data bus."
But does it run.... ? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:But does it run.... ? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:But does it run.... ? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But does it run.... ? (Score:5, Funny)
But does it support the TCP Evil Bit?
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Hmm. If you understand that humor is subjective, you will realize that what you've just posted is stupid. Alternately, if you think humor is objective, well, then you're just plain stupid.
Your post could be made in a way that doesn't make you look stupid. You could say, "Don't you people realize that I don't find any of these jokes funny?" Of course, posted that way, it makes it rather clear what a self-centered individua
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FTFA :
Additionally, it "supports user and supervisor modes,..."
From that alone, you should be able to deduce that it could in theory run a multitasking OS. Supervisor mode for when the OS needs to do things, user mode for userland stuff.
If it's got the grunt of an 8086 with a couple of megs of RAM, then it's up there with the machines on which the Internet was developed and considerably after (in computing generation terms) the machines on which mu
Minix was Sire of Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Linus copied Minix. Well known fact !!
Re:Minix was Sire of Linux (Score:5, Funny)
more than that!!!!1 (Score:5, Informative)
Windows copied Macintosh, which copied the Lisa (also from apple), which copied the Xerox Alto and Star, which copied the oNLine System (1965).
If by "copied" you mean "got ideas from." In science this is not considered cheating. It is considered doing your homework. If you don't look at other successful designs before making your own, there can be no progress. We'd end up reinventing the wheel 100 different broken ways, instead of coming up with better and better iterations on the same theme.
Linux was "inspired" by Minix, but succeeded in its place because of higher performance and a more open development environment.
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Wonder if he'll warrant a Slashdot story in about 15 years when he homebrews a 3D graphics card?
Next step (Score:5, Funny)
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Self flagellation (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Self flagellation (Score:4, Interesting)
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I have designed a small microprocessor and implemented it with a toolkit I wrote myself in Common Lisp. This toolkit simulates functional elements like registers, latches, an ALU and a microprogrammed controller.
I worked 10 months on it, but much of that was time spent (re)learning to design circuits, documenting, project management, learning the intricacies of Common Lisp, and the SBCL and CLISP implementations. I also searched and bought some old books to get some more background information.
The speed o
Pimp my Magic-1 (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm quite impressed that he went to the trouble of the cutaway side panel and the illumination [linuxdevices.com]. With all those switches and lights on the front we truly are one step closer to Star Trek technology.
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cousin? (Score:5, Funny)
That must be the same sense in which Dick Cheney is "a cousin of" Barak Obama.
Re:cousin? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:cousin? (Score:5, Informative)
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Minix back then was open source (non-TM version) but you had to buy the textbook to legally use a copy. Now it's open source and the latest version is quite respectable.
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Is there a kit version? (Score:3, Funny)
The schematics are online, and yes, it networks (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Is there a kit version? (Score:4, Funny)
Part 1 [jameco.com]
Part 2 [jameco.com]
Good Luck
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Debugging Tool [gunbroker.com]
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If you're just starting out, get Don Lancaster's TTL Cookbook first.
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Memory chips? (Score:3, Funny)
Core memory? Hey kids, instead of stringing popcorn this holiday, we are gonna do memory cores!
Cool none the less.
Truly news for nerds!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Heh heh heh... (Score:5, Funny)
Except when I'm working on it, Magic-1 is connected to the net. It serves web pages at http://www.magic-1.org [magic-1.org]
Not any more!
(I know, I know, some of you might be thinking..."How could you be so cruel as to post a link on
Re:Heh heh heh... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: not online because on display (Score:4, Informative)
Family Analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
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Altair-a-like (Score:4, Interesting)
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Besides, the Altair/Ismai "appearance" is logical when you have no way to get your data/code into the box and still want it 'general purpose'. It only makes sence to have direct control of the bus.
Remember when they first came out, a ROM based bootstrap was still the stuff of dreams for many people.
Coolest, dude ... ever... (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, just don't get more hardcore than that....
I salute him!
meh (Score:5, Funny)
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He would have probably saved quite a few gates in the control part..
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I know that a few instructions (the branching slot) only works on a pipelined implementation, but it isn't necessary to make a fully compatible MIPS.
And even a 'basic x86', is quite complicated with its instruction with a varying length..
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Doomsday paranoia (Score:5, Interesting)
Dan East
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But then again, if you cracked open all the electronics sitting in the garages of your average town you might come across a small mountain of TTL chips.
Maybe.
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Yeah - if you have the huge infrastructure to produce the IC's and LCD's, and the not inconsiderable infrastructure for the fan, switc
Vacuum tubes are easier than transistors (Score:5, Interesting)
The other parts aren't that hard. You have capacitors (just need sheets of metal foil and paper for between them), inductors (coils of wire), resistors (again, wire), and diodes (basically just a simpler version of a vacuum tube... i.e. without the grid).
If you look at some of the intricacies of medieval jewelry and such, I wouldn't think it's too much of a step to make vacuum tubes.
Like this: first, learn to make copper wire. Next, make a chemical battery. Then, use the battery technology to develop permanent magnets... Make a lot of money by selling excellent "artificial lodestone" compasses to everyone. Buy more slaves. Then, wrap the wire into a generator coil, along with the magnets. Using water-wheel technology, you now have a reliable source of (at this point alternating current) electricity.
Next, make diodes:
Learn to blow glass. Put two electrodes in a glass bottle with a heater coil on one of them, and also a valve connected to a tube. Fill the bottle with mercury, then using just gravity, you drain the bottle of mercury without letting air in: this can create a good enough vacuum to make the diode work. The only difference between this and a vacuum tube is that there's no "grid" between the electrodes.
The heater coils can be heated with the AC generator, and these diodes can be used to convert your electricity to direct current, enabling you to more cheaply produce magnetic compasses in order to fund your purchases of slaves.
Simply train them to make you more vacuum tubes, and you can make a computer! In the middle ages! Also, your diode/vacuum tube technology is the same needed in order to make light bulbs.
Really, in order to make a computer using medieval technologies, you'd need slave labor, or serfdoms (which is the same thing).
I mean, there's pretty much no way a man can be expected to make enough vacuum tubes to make even a simple computer... I'm thinking it'd take you thousands of tubes...
Tubes aren't THAT easy to make.... (Score:4, Informative)
While tubes are simple in concept, the amount of chemistry, metallurgy, and material science that went into making reliable vacuum tubes was simply astounding. Particularly for applications involving hundreds or thousands of tubes (like computers), achieving very high tube reliability is key to getting the computer to run long enough to actually crank outa few calculations before a tube fails.
Tubes that were designed for computer service needed ultrahigh purity metals, particularly nickel for the cathodes. The level of vacuum needed is FAR higher than you could get with a simple mercury siphon pump (think turbomolecular or oil diffusion pump). Exotic metallurgy and coatings are needed to produce grids and plates that don't emit their own secondary electrons. Cathode coating chemistry was jealously guarded by most manufacturers, and also critical to decent life.
All of this stuff is pretty much a "lost art" these days, and it is likely that nobody will EVER be able to duplicate the quality of the best tubes of the past, as most of the people who did it are now dead. While you can make a triode that will function as an amplifier with rudimentary glassblowing skills, making a tube that will reliably work in a high speed pulse switching environment such as a digital computer takes a great deal more knowledge and infrastructure.
Tube manufacturing was every bit as complicated as semiconductor manufacturing is today.
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Dan East
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Re:Doomsday paranoia (Score:5, Interesting)
Even a computer built from relays is still very useful if the alternative is pen and paper.
I've sometimes wondered how far back in history you'd have to go before the technology was incapable of making a reliable relay and a battery. Not such an easy thing, but in some ways easier than a mechanical computer like Babbage's difference engine. (The fine tolerances required for the machined parts gave Babbage so much trouble.)
Perhaps two hundred years ago, maybe more.
I suppose the technologically hardest part is drawing the fine copper wire. For the rest, people have been using molds with molten metal for millennia. Chemical batteries are not too hard to make if you have enough amphora.
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Joseph Henry invented the relay in 1835, ten years after William Sturgeon invented the electromagnet (in turn five years after Oersted discovered electromagnetism in 1820). So the relay was invented a couple of years before Babbage started describing his analytical engine (1837 - the simpler difference engine he descr
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It's surprisingly easy to draw wire. I've done lots of it. The original stuff was done without drawplates: they filed a notch in a plate, then put a second plate against it, clamped them firmly, and pulled, then used the next, smaller notch. You get a ha
he's running a website on it (Score:2)
way to burst his computer into flames...
The blinky lights... (Score:2, Funny)
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Maybe not
Whats amazing is if he did it just for fun (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Whats amazing is if he did it just for fun (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to exploit clever loopholes in things, go into science. As a fellow engineer I completely understand why your prof took off marks for your trick - it's bad engineering practice. You were in school to train to be a professional engineer, and with it comes certain responsibilities and mindsets. Sure, this one project was for a college course, and nobody's ever going to die from it, but in your school projects you are expected to show the same due care and diligence that would otherwise be expected of you in the workplace.
A better course of action would be to document the loophole and suggest in your documentation that, in certain, very controlled circumstances, this can be used to optimize performance (but it's a PLC, seriously, performance?). As engineers we're expected to do things by the book, following accepted standards, and if we deviate from it we are to document it fully with gigantic red underlines or whatever. This is the type of procedure that keeps planes in the sky and cars on the road.
I thought this kind of work was dead. (Score:5, Funny)
What? STATIC RAM? (Score:2)
And the low power stuff that can go months on 2 aa cells, as well!
(I've done it
That's cheating!
I can imagine this guy's pleasure (Score:5, Interesting)
When I still was a teen, I used to spend full week-ends doing such nerd stuff.
I wrote a PC-compatible BIOS for my Sanyo-MBC550 (eg: here: http://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/sanyo.html/ [seasip.info]),
and was the happiest person of the world when I first got MS-DOS 5.0 to boot on it !
I also designed a simple microcontroller-based robot from printer parts
just for fun, and I was really impressed when I saw it turn around the
whole room for the first time (it could detect obstacles by sending
ultrasonic pulses).
Also, modding a 8088 motherboard to accept a second 8088 on the 8087 socket
was definitely fun. There was no cache coherency problems at that time. You
just had to invert A19 to make the second one boot at 512 kB and the bus arbiter
let them work in parallel. It was really cool to have an 8088-SMP
Those were project during which the time did not exist. I can imagine that this
guy spends his whole spare time on his project without noticing the night come,
then the day... Sometimes I wish I still had that much spare time!
Sincere kudos to him and great respect for his work!
Willy
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How many concurrent users? (Score:5, Funny)
4Mb RAM, 4MHz CPU, 500Kb ram disk - Minix: ?
We do the same thing at my university... sort of (Score:3, Interesting)
Since our design lacks cache, the CISC architecture that this guy implemented may be faster (it does more per instruction which is critical when instruction fetch time dominates.
However, our RISC design is fully 32-bit (registers, ALU, address and data buses) and is pipelined (classic 5-stage fetch/decode/execute/memory access/register write). We also have to deal with hazards (resolved by forwarding or pipeline bubbles). We're even working on a VLIW version now.
Of course, all of this is vastly easier when you can use a high-level hardware description language. Hats off to this tinkerer.
Old Story (Score:2)
Most peope these days dont even know what a CPU really is, other then 'quad bla bla bla superduper socket bla bla' from intel or amd.
Once upon a time, this is how it was done. Stuff like this should be mandatory for all CS students ( might be still for the few of us EE's out there, but ive not been in school for a LONG time so things could be different )
Pretty much what I've dreamt of doing (Score:2)
And who knows, maybe when I retire....
I know this is ancient history... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes but . . . (Score:2)
I knew a guy who did something similar (Score:3, Interesting)
The really odd moment was overhearing the hardware guy talking to one of the software guys, who was bemoaning the lack of a logical shift-right as opposed to a bitwise shift-right in the assembly code. The hardware guy sat down, drew a couple of things, and said, "yeah, we can add that with four gates." Wouldn't THAT be nice, to be able to spend two hours wiring, and add a new assembly instruction to your processor?
I wish I could find links: they're all members of the Denver Mad Scientists' Club, but I can't find anything on their homepage.
A decent job, but if he was serious.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess you don't program computers, since you'll never be as good as, say, Donald Knuth, so you may as well give up. You don't do any sports, since you'll never by Olympic standard. No music for you either, since you're not up to the standard of Nigel Kennedy. I'm sure you have no hobbies, since someone else could do it better too. If fact, you may as well sit in a hole your entire life since whatever you do, someone will probably do it better. Come to think of it, there's probably someone out there better at sitting in a hole than you.
Now, please hand in your geek card at the door as you leave.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some times people do/make things they could easily buy because they want to, to learn, to feel connected to those who came before them and did it on thier own, or to just have something they built with their own hands.
Please if you can't understand that at least don't mock others who do~!
To evade whitelists (Score:3, Insightful)
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I wrote about this before here [slashdot.org]. It's an important issue but I think people aren't really listening. I think it all sounds a bit far-fetched, especially to techies. Central control of the Internet? The source of every packet being verified in transit to ensu
Re:yawn (Score:4, Insightful)
This thing is cool. Most current 'seniors' would hold a wire-wrap gun wrong and injure themselves.
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Or even worse, they'd wire the multihop nets in a daisy chain pattern.
Re:yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:yawn (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:yawn (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not PCBs? (Score:2)
Before anyone says they're far too difficult to make, I designed and built my own at secondary school, for a GCSE project where I built a robot. First stage - creating a computer interface! Okay, placing all the tracks and things on a computer, then laser-printing to a bit of acetate and using that as a mask for the UV lightbox prior to developing and etching might rely a bit muc
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I imagine there's some advantage of wire-wrap stuff for one-off, complex circuitry - but what's wrong with printed circuit boards?
In small quantities, they're more expensive than wire-wrap, although it depends on what your time is worth. Of course you can spend your time laying out a PCB or spend it doing wire wrap. I'd do the PCB. Especially if I needed more than one.
Is wire-wrap better for multi-layered circuits, or something?
No, PCBs are superior. Of course there are little details that are quite important, and if you don't know what you're doing, you can easily design a PCB that doesn't work.
I think the guy did it with wire wrap because it's retro. Hey, whatever floats yer boat.
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Nice way to give those old relics some new life
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Re:Why not PCBs? (Score:4, Interesting)
This was made with these tools:
double sided copper clad board
two sheets of the cheapest Tesco's Value brand matte inkjet paper
an HP LaserJet printer (1200dpi)
a normal domestic household iron
some fine grit wet-and-dry sandpaper
etchant and tinning chemicals.
an inexpensive pillar drill and 0.8mm / 1.0mm bits to make vias and holes for through-hole components
The consumables for this (photo paper, cost of printing, the blank PCB) was less than a couple of quid. It is quite time consuming though, but I enjoy making the boards anyway. It's nice to achieve something that everyone else tells you can't be done.
I *hand soldered* the fine pitch surface mount parts. All you do is carefully line up the part, tack corner pins into position with solder, then get a blob of solder on the tip of the iron and drag it down the pins - then mop up the excess with solder wick.
The nice thing about making PCBs rather than wire wrapping is you can use surface mount components (quite a few interesting chips are only available in insanely fine pitch SMD packages), and make a reasonable ground plane.
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For some reason even I don't understand I'd really like one of these. Maybe I miss the DEC PDP-11 from my youth too much.
Up until 1998 I was still working with them on the traffic signal systems here in Melbourne.
The mention of wire wrap brought back memories. To install a SCSI card in an 11/84 I had to slide out the CPU box, lie flat on the floor under the system, remove the bottom cover and use a wire wrap tool to repatch one wire in the back plane.
One day one of our people took a look inside an old roadside hut. As he crept into the dank interior, pushing aside cobwebs and worse, he noted the last date on the site log,