Month March 2008

fanout

Funny Fanout Flaws

Ugh, I’ve run into my first design flaw. Fortunately, I don’t think it will be too difficult to fix, but it’s an eye opener nonetheless. The issue I’m facing is fanout limitations. Fanout is the number of inputs that are…

ALU wiring

Bit by Bit

Although progress continues to be slow, the machine is taking shape bit by bit. I bought another 100 foot spool of wire, along with 1000 pre-cut and pre-stripped wires in lengths from 1 to 4 inches. The pre-cut wire makes…

Control system test setup with logic probes

Slow and Slower

My recent wire-wrapping progress has been painfully slow: I’ve timed myself at about 2 minutes per wire. You might wonder how it could possibly take that long, but all the measuring, stripping, threading, wrapping, and squinting time really adds up.…

wire side of board

Construction

After ages of procrastination, I’m finally making some slow but measurable progress towards turning my paper design into reality, and actually building this crazy machine. Wire wrapping seems impossibly slow and tedious compared with working on a protoboard. Just creating…