Man Builds Giant Homemade Computer To Play Tetris (bbc.com) 127
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BBC: A man has finished building an enormous computer in the sitting room of his bungalow in Cambridge. James Newman started work on the "Megaprocessor," which is 33ft (10m) wide and 6ft (2m) high, in 2012. It does the job of a chip-sized microprocessor and Mr Newman has spent $53,000 creating it. It contains 40,000 transistors, 10,000 LED lights and it weighs around half a ton (500kg). So far, he has used it to play the classic video game Tetris. Mr Newman, a digital electronics engineer, started the project because he was learning about transistors and wanted to visualize how a microprocessor worked. The components all light up as the huge device carries out a task. Mr Newman hopes the Megaprocessor will be used as an educational tool and is planning a series of open days at his home over the summer. You can watch a video demonstration of the monstrosity here.
DEC Logo as icon? (Score:5, Informative)
Why the Digital Equipment Corporation logo as the icon for this story (and other DIY stuff)?
Has /. gotten so young that nobody knows it means something more than just "digital", or has /. gotten so old that nobody remembers DEC?
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Complained about this the last time this logo was used. It's becoming an onion on my belt thing.
To these kids everything is "digital"
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Has /. gotten so young that nobody knows it means something more than just "digital"
Replace "young" with "brain dead editors" and you have your answer.
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Or has DEC been dead and buried for so long (18 years) that someone has decided to repurpose the graphic simply because they can?
*BINGO*
DEC, dead. Compaq, dead. HP, dead enough [youtube.com].
Let it go.
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HP is only MOSTLY dead...
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Why reuse the corporate logo from a company from the beginnings of the digital era?
Laziness is the answer.
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Why do you bother with icons (options icons)? Ever since /.media reneged on the "thanks click here to reject ads" link, I've reinstalled ABP. Looking at icons? No thanks.
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My reaction too. I keep seeing the bitching posts, but I don't see the icons that people are bitching about. Love that on /. of all places that the bitching gets upvoted. What happened to being tech savvy enough to block the shit that irritates you on the web?
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Re: DEC Logo as icon? (Score:1)
But older IBM computers were made with cards like that (one or a few flip flops per card) and they didn't use an IBM logo for the article. A better icon for this sort of article would be a transisrtor symbol, or maybe a soldering iron ( Steve Ciarcia used to say he wrote his best code in solder).
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The logo has fallen into public domain as well, I believe. I've been seeing tons of things with that logo on it - from music audio processing boxes to practically anything needing a fancy "digital" logo.
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Yeah, they should have used a cray [wikipedia.org] logo. Because this is cray cray.
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Because this is cray cray
I think I just puked a little. Really.
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Enigma tetris (Score:2)
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Re:site is tanked (Score:5, Informative)
He uploaded them to YouTube a few days ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] is the grand tour. From there, you can find links to the other videos.
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But even allowing for that, he isn't exactly playing well.
Megaprocessor promptly died of slashdotting n/t (Score:2)
Video mirror (Score:3, Informative)
http://web.archive.org/web/20160705214332/http://www.megaprocessor.com/Images/megaprocessor-tour1-2mbps.mp4 [archive.org]
I haven't seen a slashdotting in quite a while. I tried to dig up some mirrors (MirrorDot, CoralCDN, etc), but they're all dead now. Internet Archive to the rescue
Re:Video mirror (Score:5, Funny)
Probably because the webserver is running on that machine as well.
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if only there was free video hosting available online that could handle spikes...
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if only there was free video hosting available online that could handle spikes...
Some video hosts can handle spikes but will take down videos at the drop of a hat, especially when Tetris clones are involved. Arika Co., Ltd, developer of an official Tetris game, sent a bunch of DMCA takedown notices to YouTube in May 2009, and one of these videos was a video about The Tetris Company's copyright enforcement practices.
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imagine a Beowulf cluster of those !
If we do, it would be called Colossus and be built inside a mountain with Gamma ray traps all around it.. and we all know what that leads to..
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Just found a faster mirror: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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i learned something today... i learned that there are people out there that really suck at tetris.
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BeauHD decided to link to a 93 MB mp4 video from Slashdot.
Of course that's not going to work, what was he thinking...
He wasn't thinking. He's the same asshole who constantly posts links to Forbes and other websites who block access unless you turn off adblocking and expose yourself to malware.
NoScript (Score:1)
If you were really concerned about malware exposure, you'd be running NoScript.
One of NoScript's useful features is blocking ad-blocking access blocks.
Then you could RTFA safely if you cared to.
Raspberry Pi INFINITY! (Score:3, Interesting)
Kilo-for-kilo, the cheapest hobby computer money can buy!
Re: Raspberry Pi INFINITY! (Score:2)
The cheapest hobby computer would probably be a PIC 10F202. In the little 6 or 8 pin package they are 10 cents or so in quantity, the tools to code them are free and the hardware to flash the binary object into them is a few dollars. The 24 bytes of RAM and 512 bytes (12 bit words, really) of program memory keeps the coder honest and frugal.
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Hardware is generally a fairly cheap hobby. The initial costs for soldering equipment, etching, measuring (oscilloscope+logic analyzer) and so on set you back a few 100, after that you're looking at pennies for hours and hours of fun and entertainment. And given that the IoT is coming really soon now (tm), it can well be fun and profit.
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But it also depends on what you want to do/make. More and more keeping up with the Joneses means not just getting custom boards but being able to solder ball grid arrays. You need hot air skills, infrared gear, masks, etc.
33' x 6' (Score:1)
An educational tool to show how people waste money....
He did NOT build it "to play tetris" (Score:5, Informative)
He built it because he could, of course, but he's planning on it becoming an educational display. It's just that a computer with no actual applications is a pretty boring thing for non-techies to behold.
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I am sure even non-techies think this is impressive. Each one of those modules for that computer would of had to be assembled and tested by hand. Even then this is no simple HACK computer. It has square root for christ sakes (even if it is a bit long in cycles). This thing is WAY over-engineered yet very pretty to look at.
I'd be interested to know how modeler it is. That is can you move the logic modules around to change the instructions with the way he has those cables connected. I always liked the i
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The entire time watching the video I was thinking about having to debug it. Finding the transistor that doesn't work anymore or the wire that broke inside the insulation has to be a fun exercise in narrowing down the problem until you've found the cause.
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This is news for nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
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I agree - this was terrific. Very inspiring - one of those "I want to build one too." I remember way-back in college the instructor showed on the chalkboard how an ALU works (it was a 90 minute lecture). He drew clock lines - a few gates, memory, and a few binary instructions. He then walked through each clock tick - moved bits around - and visually showed the "computer" executing the instructions (it was something simple like Add two values and store in memory). But it made me sit up and notice.
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Eh? You really need to understand quite a bit about how a microprocessor works before those blinking leds mean anything to you and at that point you don't really need them anymore.
Building this would certainly be a great way to learn how a microprocessor works though.
Wow he's even worse at Tetris than I am (Score:3)
Dosage (Score:1)
I guess it's true then ... (Score:1)
... you really can build a mainframe from the things you find at home [bsutton.com].
Do Processing unit makers build alikes? (Score:1)
I could bet that Processing Units manufacturers (Intel, ATI/AMD, NVidia, ARM,etc.) had built things like this internally before, for years. just to understand better what they are doing.
Can any insider of those companies confirm or deny my conjecture, please?
Re:Do Processing unit makers build alikes? (Score:5, Informative)
The people who built early microprocessors mostly didn't bother emulating them first because they had a lot of experience with discrete design; processors were not mysterious to them and they had confidence that they knew what would work. The 6502 was in fact laid out entirely by hand directly in MOS masks, not more abstract circuit diagrams, and had to be reverse engineered in our day because no record remained of how its fine features worked.
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Although this video doesn't mention it the Megaprocessor is actually a clone of the 6502, based on the reverse engineering of that chip which was done by the visual6502 people.
No, you're thinking of the MOnSter 6502 [monster6502.com]. The Megaprocessor has its own instruction set [megaprocessor.com], with 4 (semi-)general purpose registers (some load and store instructions can only use R0 or R1 as the register source/destination and R2 or R3 as an index register).
You're right, thanks for the correction /nt (Score:2)
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Integrated circuits weren't invented until the late 1960's
That's not really true, the AGC was using IC gates around 1962 already.
Although this video doesn't mention it the Megaprocessor is actually a clone of the 6502, based on the reverse engineering of that chip which was done by the visual6502 people. Actual discrete transistor designs were a bit more streamlined to reduce the discrete component count.
Which is peculiar because the 6502 should have not nearly as many as 40k transistors. (If I were building a CPU out of discrete transistors, I'd definitely go for some kind of stack machine, perhaps with unencoded instructions to boot.)
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Integrated circuits weren't invented until the late 1960's
That's not really true, the AGC was using IC gates around 1962 already.
Perhaps they're thinking of MSI, which first showed up in the late 1960's; SSI predated that.
Although this video doesn't mention it the Megaprocessor is actually a clone of the 6502, based on the reverse engineering of that chip which was done by the visual6502 people. Actual discrete transistor designs were a bit more streamlined to reduce the discrete component count.
Which is peculiar because the 6502 should have not nearly as many as 40k transistors.
And, in fact, the 6502 had more like 3.5k transistors [swtch.com]; the MOnSter 6502 [monster6502.com], which is what the "clome of the 6502" person was actually thinking of, has about 4300 transistors.
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Which is peculiar because the 6502 should have not nearly as many as 40k transistors.
That's explained by the fact that it is not a 6502. The processor architecture is his own 16 bit design. This is a really impressive achievement. He designed the processor architecture from scratch, wrote an assembler and simulator and then built the thing out of (mostly) discrete transistors.
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Re:Do Processing unit makers build alikes? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was somewhat younger, I was a so-called field engineer responsible for keeping some discrete element computers running.
Here's a picture of a module. This would be a single logic element such as a flip-flop, NAND gate, OR, etc.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/2... [etsy.com]
The CPU cabinet was a huge box full of these things. The I/O controllers were in another cabinet, and the memory was in another cabinet.
The other boxes (storage, printers, card readers) had these same modules in them.
I never was main support for a CPU using those modules, but had some peripherals that had those things inside.
In more modern computers, these modules were replaced by logic cards. A PCB would have the transistors/diodes, etc to make a single element such as NAND gates, flip-flops or whatever, and these cards might have as many as 4 or even 6 logic elements on a single card. woo-eee!
I was lucky to be supporting such modern machines.
These old machines required hand-tuning such as manually synchronizing the clock signals between the near and far part of the cabinets.
The oldest machine I had to maintain was an 80 column card reader that used mechanical relays for all the logic elements. That was so long ago that the nightmares have stopped.
Similar to the MOnSter6502 (Score:5, Informative)
Somebody else built a discrete-transistor 6502 processor [monster6502.com].
And, of course, there's the non-integrated-circuit TTL 8008 [wikipedia.org], although that was probably SSI or MSI, not discrete transistors.
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Cambridge ? (Score:2)
Cambridge where?
The one in England comes to mind, but theres also one in MA (and in umpteen other staes
Theres even one in the Waikato (NZ)
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of course England.. if it was one of the others THEN it would need to be specified :)
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When someone speaks with an English accent and refers to "Cambridge" without mentioning the state, country, etc, obviously they are referring to the Cambridge in the Waikato in New Zealand. Everyone knows that.
When in doubt, look it up on Wikipedia and see which one pops up with the link to the disambiguation page. That's probably the one they're referring to.
And ladies... (Score:2)
...he's single.
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Of course! No married man's wife would put up with this huge contraption in the living room!
Why? (Score:1)
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why spend thousands of dollars and use up half your house for some you could easily do with a $5 Rasberry Pi Zero?
Flag as Inappropriate
Because he can and because he presumably enjoyed doing so.
It's the same reason some hobbyists still photograph with 19th-century film technology and it's part of the reason some amateur radio operators still use Morse Code (well, that, and because it may work when other ways of communicating over radio won't work as well, as efficiently, or at all under a given set of conditions).
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Why collect cars, trade cards, go fishing, hiking, play games, etc, etc? Because it's something you enjoy!
In this instance he built something that he was able to share with others and hey, it's pretty cool as well :)
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WTF? How on earth can you build a computer from scratch by buying a pre-build computer for $5?
Or do you actually think the purpose of this was to play tetris?
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why spend thousands of dollars and use up half your house for some you could easily do with a $5 Rasberry Pi Zero?
why do anything at all, you can experience everything you want by simply watching someone else do it online.
I want one that drops actual blocks (Score:2)
Can someone make a Tetris game that drops actual physical blocks down? Maybe on pulleys. Bonus points if filled rows actually explode.
Wait, this isn't clickbait. (Score:5, Funny)
How can this be? An actual tech story on slashdot. Nothing about creationism, obese people, the lack of women in STEM or mass shootings. Maybe I'll see if it happens again tomorrow.
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"Obese creationist women shoot up office because of lack of STEM opportunities."
Visual computing (Score:4, Interesting)
The LEDs are the coolest part. I've had trouble seeing the video on his site since it's downloading very slowly, but I love what I'm seeing so far.
Stuff like this reminds me of RAM scanning and memory ripping back in my Amiga days. Since the Amiga had no MMU and the video chip could address the entire range of the machine's main "chip" RAM, it was popular to fiddle with the screen display and scan through system memory. You could actually watch your computer running programs in realtime. The Amiga also used planar graphics, so you could see individual bits, rather than bytes, as pixels, allowing you to identify which memory locations were used for counters, timers, disk control logic, mouse pointer coordinates, and more. I wrote a whole bunch of programs in AMOS Basic that let me directly edit memory by drawing on the screen, bubble sort graphics, visually highlight specific memory addresses used by games, and do all kinds of cool nonsense.
I miss those days when you could read any memory address without needing signed drivers and such. I've always wondered why memory visualization has totally disappeared. It might make for some interesting lessons in how modern programs actually use memory and how memory leaks happen.
Re: Visual computing (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to visually monitor small computers running by using a pair of 8 bit DACs connected to the address bus with the analog outputs connected to the X and Y of an oscilloscope in XY vector mode. Where the scope trace moved around on the screen showed the branching locations of the CPU. Even without really understanding which exact locations the processor was running through you could get a heuristic view of the program in action.
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Sweet. Audio RAM scans were pretty popular, too. It was always fun to play back memory and listen for certain patterns and guess what kind of data it was, which was easy in the days before everything was compressed (or encrypted).
Closest thing I've heard that was similar to what you were doing is when engineers would put an AM radio next to a PDP-11 computer, and listen to the CPU working. By programming the CPU with differently timed loops, they could produce music over the radio. [youtube.com]
So cool too! (Score:1)
I am totally jealous.
Very neat project. (Score:2)
This is an impressive learning device.
The man should get a grant from some large software corp like MS or something to build a few of these and place them in education centers and science-museums.
James May Man Lab? (Score:2)
hmmm -- might I suggest this is a topic for a modern James May to bring this subject to life?
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would second this if only to get more of the above to watch.
however i do not think may and his lot would have the chops for this.
it doesn't actually move - and may is not that slow.
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Capt Slow vs 1 Hz? I dunno - might be a tight race.
Yes it doesn't move. But his "toy" challenges like the Legos house, toy train, and race track brought something interesting to life in an enthusiastic manner. If nothing else his enthusiasm and wit could make this computer more-cool.
where is the rest of the memory? (Score:1)
in the video, i see display ram, but i did not hear or notice anything about core/process storage.
always wanted to do something like this myself - bravo, bis, encore.
Bitcoin (Score:1)
So THIS is the guy getting all the bitcoins!
why not simulate? (Score:2)
This is very cool, but if the reason he did it was because "microprocessors were opaque" he should have just simulated it in Verilog or VHDL. Then he could follow all the operations he wanted at whatever detail he liked.
Yes Slashdot. (Score:2)
Suspicious purpose (Score:1)
Minecraft (Score:2)
He should have built it in Minecraft (like many others have done to various degrees) and saved himself 50 grand. Museums could have virtual tours of the thing:) Kids would love that. Put on your VR googles in the museum, and wander around the computer with your digital avatar, while a real person gives the tour to you via a headset.
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Now, now, now... even the copyright industry didn't try to make the bible copyrighted.
Although... Copyright is lifetime of the author + 70 years. How does this work with immortal beings? Is it possible to file suit on behalf of someone? Jewish God vs. Roman Catholic Church et al (the rest of the different flavors of zombie jesus freaks, essentially), over copyright on the bible. After all, the original author is still alive, being a being that transcends space and time.
I don't want to be the judge that has
Translation copyright (Score:2)
even the copyright industry didn't try to make the bible copyrighted.
All well-known translations of the Bible into modern English are copyrighted with a non-free license except one: the World English Bible.
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The bible would not settle this issue. The authors are undisputed humans that are all long since dead regardless of who th
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Uh... I don't know if that's really so undisputed. At the very least that 10 commandment part is often claimed that it has been done by the big cheese himself.
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If you weren't paying your assistant, your assistant would hold the copyright on a dictated letter not you. You only get the copyright because it's produced as a work for hire. It isn't even made clear from t
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I guess one could argue that the so called "prophets" are doing "the Lord's work", i.e. can be considered to be employed by that god. And monetary compensation for their subjects has never really been big with churches, they usually get away with giving out "His love" or similar rather intangible assets, which is considered sufficient compensation by those "chosen ones".
Worked for religions throughout the ages. I guess we can thus assume with sufficient evidence that, at least according to the bible, which
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It's Turing complete, so yes.