5 ms·

One of the things that has long been on my bucket list is to do something along these lines. Unfortunately, wire wrapping equipment is too expensive for me to

One of the things that has long been on my bucket list is to do something along these lines. Unfortunately, wire wrapping equipment is too expensive for me to justify to myself currently.

zw123456 12y ago
One thing that I have recommended to people who want to do something like this but without the fuss is to check out the schematic capture feature of the Altera Quartus II Design software, there is a free web version of it available and there are very cheap experimenters boards like the Terasic DE0 which goes for around $50. You can draw the schematics using TTL or equivalent and it will produce the equivalent HDL and compile it and you can run it on a real FPGA, it is just like doing it with TTL, but just not as much soldering or wire wrapping involved :)
- TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
  The appeal of a homebrew CPU to me though is the hardware itself. If I was going to run something on an FPGA, I might as well just write a emulator on my computer and be done with it.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
> Unfortunately, wire wrapping equipment is too > expensive for me to justify to myself currently. $30.50 from Mouser [1] :-) I've got a couple of these and the OK power wrap which takes impossible to find NiCd batteries. The point I'm trying to make is that wire wrapping, as a prototyping scheme, is inexpensive, although it is very time consuming. I used to build Z80 systems with wirewrap all the time, and it is both quieter (from an electronic noise perspective) and more durable than solderless breadboards. Of course with places like OSHPark you can make PCBs pretty cheaply so that is a consideration as well. [1] http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/OK-Industries/WSU-30M/?qs=ZAOMJWF7Iq%2FJ6X%252by%2Fzsyzg%3D%3D&kpid=2013947&gclid=COrEwafkrMECFUKCMgodeVEALw http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/OK-Industries/WSU-30M/?q...
- monstermonster 12y ago
  Ugh that brings back bad memories of my first ever proper job which was wirewrapping prototypes for a couple of design engineers. Was ok for the first couple of hours, then you realised why they didn't do it themselves. I built a simple Z80 system in 1997 and refused to do that again so I used strip board. Worked fine. Wouldn't use it for analogue/RF though.
- TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
  Meh, should have specified. If I was going to be building something like a homebrew CPU, I would not want to go with a manual wire wrapping tool. Plus I'm in Canada, which means a lot of places have higher shipping charges, yay. But as for simple boards? Wire wrapping all the way. If nothing else, it tends to be easier to modify than an ordinary PCB.

One of the things that has long been on my bucket list is to do something along these lines. Unfortunately, wire wrapping equipment is too expensive for me to justify to myself currently.

zw123456 12y ago

One thing that I have recommended to people who want to do something like this but without the fuss is to check out the schematic capture feature of the Altera Quartus II Design software, there is a free web version of it available and there are very cheap experimenters boards like the Terasic DE0 which goes for around $50. You can draw the schematics using TTL or equivalent and it will produce the equivalent HDL and compile it and you can run it on a real FPGA, it is just like doing it with TTL, but just not as much soldering or wire wrapping involved :)

TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
The appeal of a homebrew CPU to me though is the hardware itself. If I was going to run something on an FPGA, I might as well just write a emulator on my computer and be done with it.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

> Unfortunately, wire wrapping equipment is too > expensive for me to justify to myself currently. $30.50 from Mouser [1] :-) I've got a couple of these and the OK power wrap which takes impossible to find NiCd batteries. The point I'm trying to make is that wire wrapping, as a prototyping scheme, is inexpensive, although it is very time consuming. I used to build Z80 systems with wirewrap all the time, and it is both quieter (from an electronic noise perspective) and more durable than solderless breadboards. Of course with places like OSHPark you can make PCBs pretty cheaply so that is a consideration as well. [1] http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/OK-Industries/WSU-30M/?qs=ZAOMJWF7Iq%2FJ6X%252by%2Fzsyzg%3D%3D&kpid=2013947&gclid=COrEwafkrMECFUKCMgodeVEALw http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/OK-Industries/WSU-30M/?q...

monstermonster 12y ago
Ugh that brings back bad memories of my first ever proper job which was wirewrapping prototypes for a couple of design engineers. Was ok for the first couple of hours, then you realised why they didn't do it themselves. I built a simple Z80 system in 1997 and refused to do that again so I used strip board. Worked fine. Wouldn't use it for analogue/RF though.
TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
Meh, should have specified. If I was going to be building something like a homebrew CPU, I would not want to go with a manual wire wrapping tool. Plus I'm in Canada, which means a lot of places have higher shipping charges, yay. But as for simple boards? Wire wrapping all the way. If nothing else, it tends to be easier to modify than an ordinary PCB.