Student build's an 8-bit computer system for himself

Adding his own device to one of the best examples of Do It Yourself (DIY) challenges, Jack, a high-school student, built himself an 8-bit computer from scratch, in one year time. This contained over 100 TTL chips, a soldering iron, an old black and white television, and an old keyboard. This hand-made computer has 64KB of main system memory and a 256 bytes of RAM.

8-bit computer built by hand

Since Jack is a programmer himself, he built his own operating system for his self made computer named Duo Adept. He began from binary and came out with a 263 lines of code OS. Do not think it to be something less powerful as it can play many hand-crafted games. As icing on the cake, Jack has created versions of Get Muffins and Conway’s Game of Life which can be played in this computer.

For the graphics processor and the Central Processing Unit (CPU), Jack used a breadboard with a soldering iron, lots of wire to connect all of the points and a Tupperware box case. He packed all the wires in the case and one can see numerous wires in it. Nonetheless, there remain some wires between parts of the board. Along with that, the use of box came as a treat as because of it, the computer does not need any cooling or airflow. The top of the Tupperware case can be popped open to make modifications or changes if needed.

It must be noted that Jack had earlier designed Duo Ultimate but that design was abandoned in favor of a newer design. The Duo Ultimate was also an 8-bit machine that allowed embedded commands, function calls and variable scope. Okay then, if you are impressed with Jack's work, now is your time then to take up a challenge to built something like this of your own. Don’t worry, Jack’s there on his website to help you with his full part listing.

Via: Geek