4 ms·

Appraise for the effort. But I do not know why anybody did this kind of tedious job. Isn't it enough to do with Verilog / VHDL to fully understand basic archite

Appraise for the effort. But I do not know why anybody did this kind of tedious job. Isn't it enough to do with Verilog / VHDL to fully understand basic architecture of CPU?

analog31 10y ago
In my view, it depends on what you get your pleasure from. Taking something from model to metal invokes a certain crazy satisfaction that's hard to describe. I've built things that didn't really need to be built, for this reason.
- mysterydip 10y ago
  Seems similar to ship-in-a-bottle in the age of 3d modeling/painting/printing :)
  - dom0 10y ago
    You can still do it old-style with no custom-made PC boards ... I actually have quite a few protoboards made with a wiring pencil. No CPU/computer though. Most complex thing is probably a serial-to-NATO (alphabet/language) board :)
Gracana 10y ago
The toolchain for a 7400 series project is very different from an FPGA. That's a bit obvious of course, but compare them... With an FPGA you have a giant proprietary software package, with some incredibly powerful tools at your disposal. They're damn useful, and they're fast, but the focus is on learning how to describe your design to Xilinx ISE or whatever, and you have to learn the software so you can use its testbench facilities to validate your design, etc. With discrete logic, the design can be done on paper and with standard EDA tools, and you can prototype it and test and build it on your workbench, and all the signals are exposed so you can inject and probe signals with standard test equipment. I like the discrete logic approach because it feels more tangible and it's fun from an electronics tinkering perspective. But the FPGA method is for sure gonna be faster and smaller and cheaper, you just have to do all the work in software. Depends on the experience you want in your hobby project, I guess. :)

4 ms·

Appraise for the effort. But I do not know why anybody did this kind of tedious job. Isn't it enough to do with Verilog / VHDL to fully understand basic archite

by codebook 10y ago

Appraise for the effort. But I do not know why anybody did this kind of tedious job. Isn't it enough to do with Verilog / VHDL to fully understand basic architecture of CPU?

analog31 10y ago
In my view, it depends on what you get your pleasure from. Taking something from model to metal invokes a certain crazy satisfaction that's hard to describe. I've built things that didn't really need to be built, for this reason.
- mysterydip 10y ago
  Seems similar to ship-in-a-bottle in the age of 3d modeling/painting/printing :)
  - dom0 10y ago
    You can still do it old-style with no custom-made PC boards ... I actually have quite a few protoboards made with a wiring pencil. No CPU/computer though. Most complex thing is probably a serial-to-NATO (alphabet/language) board :)
Gracana 10y ago
The toolchain for a 7400 series project is very different from an FPGA. That's a bit obvious of course, but compare them... With an FPGA you have a giant proprietary software package, with some incredibly powerful tools at your disposal. They're damn useful, and they're fast, but the focus is on learning how to describe your design to Xilinx ISE or whatever, and you have to learn the software so you can use its testbench facilities to validate your design, etc. With discrete logic, the design can be done on paper and with standard EDA tools, and you can prototype it and test and build it on your workbench, and all the signals are exposed so you can inject and probe signals with standard test equipment. I like the discrete logic approach because it feels more tangible and it's fun from an electronics tinkering perspective. But the FPGA method is for sure gonna be faster and smaller and cheaper, you just have to do all the work in software. Depends on the experience you want in your hobby project, I guess. :)