Sup PrepHole. I have lots of spare time and am thinking about making a computer from scratch, meaning transistors and diodes. Has anyone done this. I also think it would be cool to use core memory. Could I make the cores from iron powder or some other easily matireal? Imagine how uber awesome it would be to actually have a real "core dump". I have plenty of time and money so this project should be possible.
wait til you see how small those ferrite core rings are.
Design it with logic gate software first, make sure it runs
>Has anyone done this.
next time, instead of posting a thread, how about you try using google instead
>Has anyone done this
No, computers were discovered in the pyramids. There's a lot of fluff in textbooks, but nobody's really sure how they work.
> core dump
Well, maybe you want to run unix to get a core dump, that’s going to be, mimimally, a 68000 class CPU so you’re looking at around 70,000 transistors.
your best bet would be to do a relay computer.
You can make a relay with some copper wire, a ferrous core, a spring and some copper plates. The first computers were relay computers then they moved to vacuum tubes then to transistor. The greatest feature of relays is that once you get bored wasting your time making them yourself, you can purchase premade ones off aliexpress for 20p each.
On this forum we occasionally get time waster posts where people say they want to build something and then never actually do it. I hope you're not one of those. I would love to see the things you can make.
'Sup
https://www.hpmuseum.org/hp9100.htm
I did rough calculations for a very low end 8 bit discrete transistor machine with 1 kilobit of core. Came out to a few grand, mostly for ferrites. You might be able to cut costs further by reusing a core module from ebay instead of scratch building, if you can find a suitable unit
>Came out to a few grand, mostly for ferrites
How are you fricking up so badly at shopping?
~$25 would get 1000 little ferrite toroids to your door. Literally less than a minute of searching.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303668565815
>How are you fricking up so badly at shopping?
>why are you bad at finding the best deal on obscure items in 5 minutes on a whim for a novelty project nobody needs anyway in a world where google is shit
i mean.. that anon just did it
That are filter toroids. You can't build a core memory out of these.
https://www.shop-tes.com/1000-square-loop-ferrite-memory-cores/
Cheaper AND purpose-made.
Thank you.
Try making a clock or calculator first, you'll be able to just rearrange and add components if you truly feel like going all out.
When I was a kid I took apart a cash register that had nixie tubes in it.
>I have plenty of time and money so this project should be possible.
Do you have enough autism?
>from scratch, meaning transistors and diodes
You're never going to be able to build enough (consistent) components that will work. A handful of people have etched their own very basic integrated circuits. You have no chance.
one of my pipedream fantasies is trying to cobble together an intel 4004 using razor blade cat-whisker diode logic
i'd call it the trench computer in honor of the trench radios which were also built this way
>I have lots of spare time and am thinking about making a computer from scratch, meaning transistors and diodes.
hahaha you won't do it.
>Has anyone done this.
absolutely, and you would know if you googled it.
>I also think it would be cool to use core memory.
well core memory is expensive and difficult to do, so you won't do it.
>Could I make the cores from iron powder or some other easily matireal?
You? no.
>Imagine how uber awesome it would be to actually have a real "core dump". I have plenty of time and money so this project should be possible.
seriously though, you won't do it.
there are several clues to OP never doing this:
didn't google it.
didn't google it.
asked on PrepHole.
didn't google it.
>thinking about making a computer from scratch
Covered here:
https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki//aig/_Alternative_ISA_General
I was once told that the ferrite core memories were made by Chinese girls; they were the only ones with thin fingers and sufficient patence to be able to knit these mats. It is harder then it first appears.
You might make a nice project by making a robot to make these memories.
I'd advise against magnetic core memory.
It's not stable enough for modern components.
I am currently working on a small lisp machine implemented on a FPGA.
My advice for a good start is to implement a CPU in a simulator like Logisim. This will give you the sense of scale of your project and if you quit you can quit here with no investments. Then move to an FPGA this will cost around 100$. Once you have an instruction set, you can go down one of two ways.
1) You can build up, and build a language, compiler and OS for your device
2) You can go lower and reimplement the devices in chips (memory, processor, power supply etc) and eventually even translate it to transistor logic.
One issue with making transistor logic work would be pairing the transistors. You would need a high quality curve tracer, and a lot of the transistors you buy will need to be discarded. Also you would need build error recovery protocols since the signals of whatever you handmake on that scale would be all over the place, I doubt it would be very usable.
DIY computing is an interesting hobby, but you will need to figure a lot of stuff out along the way. Definitely worth while.
> lisp machine
Anon is posting from 1976.
Picrel is is his bedroom. Punch card deck on top is PrepHole archive.
>not stable enough
You wot mate.
They could ship the boxes pre loaded and the bits wpuld still be there after it got unloaded and turned on
Check out Ben Eater on youtube. He builds an 8bit from DIPs but provides enough info to build logic gates from troonys.
There are plenty of projects built from TTL chips and relays. It just depends on how complex you want the architecture to be.
http://homebrewcpu.com/
Ok but will you be able to run Crysis on max?
yeah some gay did it with TTL, which is gay, but significantly less gay than your idea, and it only ran at like 100 hz.
The general purpose computer is the most impactful tool for enhancing ones creativity and productivity. It's manufacturing process is very precise and requires expensive industrial machinery to do so. So far no alternate that can be done by the individual exists which can attain the same level of power efficiency and as a result, making use of such a tool is in some degree bound to that of societal manufacturing chains (how much you'll have to depend on such is dependent on the lifespan and storage properties of components) moreso than most. While making a gargantuam core-memory computer is little more than a hobby project considering it's limitations, the development of diy computers that are sufficient would be quite significant and thus in principle is a better use than most even though it's less guaranteed to produce results than other hobbies, and regardless you learn a lot while doing so.
You SHOULD check out the NAND2Tetris project first. This is an amazing learning resource exactly for your goal. Learn basics, design and debug the computer in software, then embody it in any sort of hardware you want. Especially if you have never done this before and have no clue about how does digital electronics work.
https://www.nand2tetris.org/
i made an 8bit ripple counter and some SRAM with BJT's and resistors
was fun and cheap but ultimately useless
if you can get nmos/pmos pairs for cheap i recommend you use those instead
You're gonna want to check out Ben Eater:
https://www.youtube.com/@BenEater
Builds a computer step by step.
Maybe not as low level as you're intending.
But you could still follow along, just replacing the simple chips he uses with circuits made from scratch.