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From: der Mouse <mouse_at_Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
Date: Fri Aug 27 02:50:26 2004

>> I have wire-wrapped my own processor, though [...]
> I've designed a custom CPU. Never got around to building it
> though...

I once took a hardware design course where we ended up building
basically a tiny computer with a 4-bit word size. Not much RAM, since
RAM addresses were also only 4 bits, but we _were_ building this out of
discrete logic DIPs on breadboards. (The 4-bit-by-16-entry RAM chip
and the ALU were probably the most complex chips involved.)

It was a lot of fun. It also rather spoiled me for breadboards, as the
breadboards we used were _really_ _nice_. Instead of being the
wish-board style, plastic grid with metal connectors below it that you
push stripped wire ends into, each DIP socket was brought out to
individual posts, one per pin, with (gold-plated!) female connectors.
The jumper wires ended in little (also gold-plated) metal stackable
connectors, not unlike banana plugs shrunk down (and done solid -
without the springy sides so characteristic of banana plugs), cylinders
with a smaller concentric cylinder offset, so as to form a male
connector on one side and a female on the other (hence the
stackability). Each wire had one of these little stackable connectors
on each end. There were also base stations with power supplies and
clock generators built in (brought out to similar connector pins)....

I shudder to think what those things must have cost the university, but
I'd say they were well worth it.

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Received on Fri Aug 27 2004 - 02:50:26 BST