3 ms·
You know we have these things called FPGAs. That's where you can have fun with hardware hacking nowdays. You can design whatever piece of hardware you want and
by alain94040 17y ago
You know we have these things called FPGAs. That's where you can have fun with hardware hacking nowdays.
You can design whatever piece of hardware you want and still have it execute at a decent speed (say 50 MHz, vs. 2 GHz for a Pentium). But I can put millions of gates of logic.
An 8-bit CPU is maybe 5,000 gates at most. A decent 32-bit RISC processor is below 100,000 gates.
My previous employer builds machines filled with such FPGAs (http://eve-usa.com http://eve-usa.com). On those, you can map really crazy stuff like real, modern processors. It's the ultimate sandbox for the hardware designer.
The only problem is that they tend to be a little bit pricey for amateurs (but I hear you can get boxes real cheap through university programs - lucky students).
- mncaudill 17y agoI don't think he was focusing on performance. Bill Buzbee, of homebrewcpu.com, built his the same way, with wire-wrapped TTLs. He did it because he wanted "touch the magic" of those early machines. I imagine there is something very satisfying of individually wire-wrapping thousands of connections and dealing with the minutiae of a complicated electronic device that prototyping a FPGA just can't give you, especially for a pet hobby.
- maximilian 17y agoSparkfun has a number of relatively inexpensive FPGA boards to use. I might get one if I finish some of my other things this summer. http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=fpga&x=0&y=0&search_section=products http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/advanced_search_result.php?...
- anigbrowl 17y agoI think that's a bit like saying that there's no point in painting pictures when you could just use a camera...this is obviously a labor of love. Incidentally, if you ever get to the Computer History Museum in San Jose, they have an original computer from the Apollo missions there...which is also a bunch of wrapped wires. Gave me quite a shiver to imagine 3 people trusting their life to that.