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You can do that easily and cheaply today without a fancy transistor printer. You can find Apple II schematics easily enough online. All the chips are common, o

You can do that easily and cheaply today without a fancy transistor printer. You can find Apple II schematics easily enough online. All the chips are common, off-the-shelf parts still available today. You can send the KiCAD drawings (also available) to a company like PCBWay and have PCBs made very cheaply and in small quantity. Then all you have to do is solder in the chips and other components and connect the board to a power supply.

exe34 2y ago
I think the appeal is the you can print out a couple of pages of chips and wire them up, not send out for chips and PCBs.
- chongli 2y ago
  You can order a whole batch of chips and wire them up on breadboards without sending away to have a PCB made. The PCB step is the last one when you want to finalize your computer and package it up. Ben Eater actually has a free course on YouTube [1] all about building a breadboard computer! [1] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2565dvjafglHU https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2565d...
  - fc417fc802 2y ago
    There's just a different emotional sense between manufacturing the lego bricks yourself versus mail ordering the magic blocks that you can assemble into a finished product.
    - chongli 2y ago
      Lego bricks is an apt analogy. I don't know how many people would actually care to manufacture their own Lego bricks but millions of people enjoy putting Lego together. Sam Zeloof [1] actually went through the exercise of making his own semiconductors from scratch. It's a lot of chemistry and experimentation and quite interesting as an exercise, but not at all practical for building your own computer. Printable transistors would take away the nasty chemistry bits that Sam had to deal with but otherwise wouldn't help much with making practical devices. Computers have a lot of very standard, "Lego brick" or jellybean components. Stuff like muxes/demuxes, shift registers, adders, and the like. These are the components you can buy off the shelf to build your own computer. Building these yourself on giant sheets of paper with a printer might be interesting but you'd get a far less practical, usable computer out of the deal. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@SamZeloof/videos https://www.youtube.com/@SamZeloof/videos
    - rgzz 2y ago
      I don't know much about this topic but you still need the magic bricks in the printer to make the magic bricks though, no? I guess this can be either depressing or relieving but I'm in the former category, I wish you could do this stuff from sand or something, without relying on modern technology, would be fun.
      - fc417fc802 2y ago
        In my mind the printer counts as a tool so it's a different category. Also you could always do the same by hand with a mask. The feature size might be a bit larger though. As to doing it all "from sand". You can! At least sort of. It's always a question of how far down the stack you want to take it. After all you probably need to source rare earths from somewhere that isn't your backyard. Check out pictures of the old processes before automated VLSI. It was all done by hand including crystalizing the silicon. You'll need a clean room and a bunch of weird supplies though.
doublepg23 2y ago
You can even make a Mac SE/30 "from scratch" - it's mind blowing how many PCBs and chips people have made for retro computing. https://youtu.be/zc3sPoqOFG8?si=iIamSEB00mnxfQdL https://youtu.be/zc3sPoqOFG8?si=iIamSEB00mnxfQdL
- chongli 2y ago
  Wow, thank you for this! At some point I really want to get my own Mac SE/30. I have a Mac Classic (inherited from my uncle) I still need to work on. This video is really exciting for anyone who wants to fix one of these vintage machines but ends up with a motherboard PCB that's been severely damaged by battery leakage.

exe34 2y ago

I think the appeal is the you can print out a couple of pages of chips and wire them up, not send out for chips and PCBs.

chongli 2y ago
You can order a whole batch of chips and wire them up on breadboards without sending away to have a PCB made. The PCB step is the last one when you want to finalize your computer and package it up. Ben Eater actually has a free course on YouTube [1] all about building a breadboard computer! [1] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2565dvjafglHU https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2565d...
- fc417fc802 2y ago
  There's just a different emotional sense between manufacturing the lego bricks yourself versus mail ordering the magic blocks that you can assemble into a finished product.
  - chongli 2y ago
    Lego bricks is an apt analogy. I don't know how many people would actually care to manufacture their own Lego bricks but millions of people enjoy putting Lego together. Sam Zeloof [1] actually went through the exercise of making his own semiconductors from scratch. It's a lot of chemistry and experimentation and quite interesting as an exercise, but not at all practical for building your own computer. Printable transistors would take away the nasty chemistry bits that Sam had to deal with but otherwise wouldn't help much with making practical devices. Computers have a lot of very standard, "Lego brick" or jellybean components. Stuff like muxes/demuxes, shift registers, adders, and the like. These are the components you can buy off the shelf to build your own computer. Building these yourself on giant sheets of paper with a printer might be interesting but you'd get a far less practical, usable computer out of the deal. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@SamZeloof/videos https://www.youtube.com/@SamZeloof/videos
  - rgzz 2y ago
    I don't know much about this topic but you still need the magic bricks in the printer to make the magic bricks though, no? I guess this can be either depressing or relieving but I'm in the former category, I wish you could do this stuff from sand or something, without relying on modern technology, would be fun.
    - fc417fc802 2y ago
      In my mind the printer counts as a tool so it's a different category. Also you could always do the same by hand with a mask. The feature size might be a bit larger though. As to doing it all "from sand". You can! At least sort of. It's always a question of how far down the stack you want to take it. After all you probably need to source rare earths from somewhere that isn't your backyard. Check out pictures of the old processes before automated VLSI. It was all done by hand including crystalizing the silicon. You'll need a clean room and a bunch of weird supplies though.

doublepg23 2y ago

You can even make a Mac SE/30 "from scratch" - it's mind blowing how many PCBs and chips people have made for retro computing. https://youtu.be/zc3sPoqOFG8?si=iIamSEB00mnxfQdL https://youtu.be/zc3sPoqOFG8?si=iIamSEB00mnxfQdL

chongli 2y ago
Wow, thank you for this! At some point I really want to get my own Mac SE/30. I have a Mac Classic (inherited from my uncle) I still need to work on. This video is really exciting for anyone who wants to fix one of these vintage machines but ends up with a motherboard PCB that's been severely damaged by battery leakage.