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BMOW Project Summary

Crazy day today! Maker Faire setup begins tomorrow, and BMOW is featured on wired.com, and is the #1 Top in All Topics story on Digg! Oh man, this poor server is getting hammered.

Many people have asked for high-res photos. See this entry from February, and click any of the thumbnails to get the high-res versions of wire-wrapping craziness.

For people interested in viewing or buying the “Making of BMOW” photo book, you can order it from Shutterfly here.

 

Here’s a summary of  the project, for everyone following the link from the article.

Big Mess o’ Wires 1 is an original CPU design. It does not use any commercial CPU, but instead has a custom CPU constructed from dozens of simple logic chips. Around this foundation is built a full computer with support for a keyboard, sound, video, and external peripherals.

My original goals were:

  • Build the CPU from scratch, primarily using basic 7400-series logic. No 6502, Z-80, etc.
  • Keep the hardware complexity to a minimum. I’m not an electrical engineer.
  • Be capable of running “real” programs, not a 4-bit CPU or toy machine.
  • Provide a way to interface with a PC.
  • Be fast enough to run interesting programs interactively.

Stretch goals:

  • Boot into a simple integer BASIC program, capable of interactively editing and running its own programs.
  • Support multiple programs executing simultaneously, via a pre-emptive multitasking OS.
  • Provide keyboard input, VGA video and sound output.

Initial design began in November 2007 with a high-level sketch of the CPU internal design. A simplified Verilog hardware simulation proved the key design details. Construction began in earnest in February 2008, using a large wire-wrap board to interconnect the 50 or so chips needed. In April, a half-finished BMOW 1 booted up for the first time, computing fibonacci(12) = 144 using a simple ROM-based program. One by one the original system goals and stretch goals were met, including VGA video, three voice audio, BASIC, and a bootloader for communication with an attached PC. BMOW 1 eventually gained the ability to run complex programs written in assembly or compiled from C. The main construction phase ended in February 2009, with the completion of a customized case to house everything. As of March 2009, Big Mess o’ Wires 1 is fully functional, but will probably never be “finished”.

Architecture

BMOW 1 borrows liberally from other homebrew designs, as well as the MAYBE design presented in the book Computation Structures by Stephen Ward and Robert Halstead. Data busses are 8 bits wide, and the address bus is 24 bits. Four 8-bit registers are used for general data, and three 24-bit registers store the program counter, stack pointer, and a scratch/working address pointer. Registers and the arithmetic and logic unit are interconnected by one data bus, while RAM, ROM, and memory-mapped hardware devices use a second data bus. The ALU also has dedicated left and right data input busses.

Machine language instructions are implemented as a series of micro-instructions, stored in three parallel ROMs to create a 24-bit microcode word. One micro-instruction is executed each clock cycle, and the micro-instruction bits are used directly as enable and select inputs to control all the chips in the machine. Up to 16 micro-instructions may be needed to implement a single machine language instruction.

Note: Some additional devices are not shown here, including the VGA display circuitry and real-time clock.

24-bit addresses allow for up to 16MB of memory, but only a little more than 1MB of combined RAM and ROM is installed. The most-significant byte of the address is called the bank byte, and is normally invisible to programs. The standard instruction set presents a 16-bit interface to programs, with most instructions implicitly referencing the current bank. Cross-bank references are possible, but awkward (think x86 segment registers).

A 512K ROM contains a bootloader/menu program. A USB-to-TTL interface based on an FTDI chip provides an easy way to move data to and from a connected PC. A standard PC keyboard with PS/2 connector is used for keyboard input, and a 24×2 character text LCD serves as a debug output display. Custom video circuitry drives a standard VGA monitor, with a maximum resolution of 512 x 480. A three-voice programmable sound generator provides music and sounds.

BMOW 1 is built on an Augat wire-wrap board pre-populated with thousands of wire-wrap pins. The chips are pushed into the board without soldering, and can be easily removed, similar to a prototyping breadboard. Unlike a breadboard, the pins are individually connected on the underside of the board according to the needs of the circuit design. A wire-wrap tool is used to wrap stripped wire ends tightly around each pin. Wires can be removed fairly easily in case of a mistake. BMOW 1 contains about 2500 such wire wraps.

Specs

  • Current clock speed is 2MHz. It could theoretically go to about 3MHz (untested).
  • 512 KBytes of RAM, 512 KBytes of ROM.
  • Power draw is 10 Watts, 2.0A at 5V.
  • VGA video output is 512×480 with two colors, or 128×240 with 256 colors.
  • Audio and music is provided by a three-voice programmable sound generator.
  • Keyboard input is a standard PC keyboard with PS/2 connector.
  • Debug display is a 24×2 character text LCD.
  • There are roughly 1250 wires connecting the components, so 2500 individual hand-turned wire wraps.

Please send me your thoughts and questions!

BMOW 1 Photo Gallery

Read 111 comments and join the conversation 

111 Comments so far

  1. Jon - May 28th, 2009 7:00 am

    The details of this would make a fine book — a practical companion workbook to Steve Petzold’s “Code”?
    I’d be especially keen to learn how you ramped up to implement each component of your block-level design. How about debugging — what tools and techniques did you apply? Where to even begin testing, say, the RAM bus? Or the ALU?

    Congrats on one of the coolest projects, ever!!

  2. ToeKnee - May 28th, 2009 7:04 am

    Very cool – It is a great idea and took incredible dedication to make it happen. What’s the next project? 😉

  3. Alain Robert - May 28th, 2009 7:32 am

    simply Wow !

  4. No One - May 28th, 2009 7:46 am

    Newsgator can’t subscribe to your blog – are you atom/rss feeds enabled?

  5. branden - May 28th, 2009 7:46 am

    This is freaking awesome, I’ve dreamed of doing this but lack the spare time and knowledge. Kudos, sir.

  6. Graham Crocker - May 28th, 2009 8:27 am

    Well Done!

  7. Smokey McPot - May 28th, 2009 9:08 am

    Good God, man! I’m usually a little underwhelmed by homebrew tech projects (which can tend to be pretty gimmicky) but this is just awesome. Besides being a neat concept, it looks really cool, and serves very well to emphasize the connection between the ever-more-complex hardware of computers and the familiar output from that machinery.

  8. Other Steve - May 28th, 2009 9:23 am

    I’m extremely jealous! I wish I could have made such a feat!

  9. digital_dean - May 28th, 2009 9:56 am

    My favorite quote from this article…”I’m not an electrical engineer.”
    Wow, you missed your calling! If it was available as a kit, I’d buy one.
    Nice job!!!

  10. jesse - May 28th, 2009 11:13 am

    very cool man!

    I was wondering why @ list 20 the text only has one “?” but when the program prints it out it has “? ?”

    ?

  11. allan - May 28th, 2009 11:23 am

    @jesse

    the basic INPUT command prints a ? by default.

  12. NM - May 28th, 2009 12:06 pm

    Props man! When you were quoted as to why it took a year, and mentioned “general procrastiation”. Wow man. I bet your procrastination is 10x more productive than my most productive state!!!

  13. Jason - May 28th, 2009 4:38 pm

    Bravo bud, very cool and impressive.

  14. Shane - May 28th, 2009 5:07 pm

    G’day from Australia!
    Just wanted to say a big congrats on the amazing project. I take my hat off to you.

    Shane

  15. dblackshell - May 28th, 2009 10:32 pm

    interesting project, I subscribe (as someone else did) that you should do a book on the steps you took while having this project…

    once again Kudos to you 🙂

  16. Hassan Ali - May 28th, 2009 11:20 pm

    Calm down , man don’t be jealous. This is a superb task. I think you should file for patent for this processor before someone else do. As you know….. the comments

  17. Hassan Ali - May 28th, 2009 11:22 pm

    Ha ha you are using the Acer Case.

  18. Hassan Ali - May 28th, 2009 11:24 pm

    Wheres the digg button ?

  19. MilanG - May 29th, 2009 12:04 am

    That’s soooo coool!
    Where was you back in 80’s? :))
    How much time did you spent making this thing? 🙂

  20. Ahab - May 29th, 2009 12:08 am

    You’re a hero among the nerds of the world. A goddamn hero, man!

  21. […] may be needed to implement a single machine language instruction. Source – BMOW […]

  22. MaikUniversum - May 29th, 2009 3:53 am

    Can I play CS 1.6 on this PC ?

  23. cber - May 29th, 2009 5:24 am

    Crazy~

  24. frederic MJ - May 29th, 2009 5:39 am

    OMG!
    Impressive! Attractive! Incredible!
    You are not a engineer in electronics…?! but who are you man?

  25. Steve - May 29th, 2009 6:08 am

    Thanks everyone for the enthusiastic comments! I hope to meet some of you in person this weekend at the Maker Faire.

    If you’d like to learn more about BMOW’s details, go back through the earliest entries of this blog from 2008 and 2007. They document the early months of planning, and the start of construction on the CPU core.

    There’s also a BMOW PowerPoint presentation I made for the Faire, which gives a good summary of everything. http://www.bigmessowires.com/Maker%20Faire.ppt

    Be sure to also check out my current project, 3D Graphics Thingy, which is still in the planning stage. http://www.bigmessowires.com/category/3dgt/

    If anyone’s interested in building a CPU project like this themselves, it’s not as difficult as you might think! Lots of people have done it, and mine is not the best of the bunch by any means. Shoot me an email and I’d be happy to give you some ideas on how to get started.

  26. Tervis - May 29th, 2009 8:15 am

    In 6th pic theres that black knob. Is it from any Boss guitar pedal, since it looks very similar.

  27. Steve - May 29th, 2009 8:42 am

    Good eye. It’s a generic shaft-mounted knob that I purchased from Fry’s. It controls the volume for BMOW’s built-in speaker amplifier.

  28. Matti - May 29th, 2009 10:53 am

    Cool stuff!

    What will be your next project? CPU made of discretes?

  29. John Romero - May 29th, 2009 11:25 am

    Wow.

  30. Andrea Decker - May 29th, 2009 11:53 am

    Wow. BMOW looks a lot like the IMSAI 8080 that my dad built circuit by circuit in 1976. I still have that computer.

  31. chris - May 29th, 2009 11:56 am

    Nice work. Can’t wait to take a peek at maker faire tomorrow.

  32. darryl - May 29th, 2009 12:49 pm

    nice going, it reminds me of the arcade video games when they first came out, they too were based on descrete TTL chips. soon after they adopted the 8080 and z-80 and 6502.

    But nice work, very impressive.

  33. Michael - May 29th, 2009 2:03 pm

    When the apocalypse comes, I’ll want to be near you and that guy who made the video of making vacuum tubes by hand!

  34. jason short - May 29th, 2009 5:06 pm

    I remember when I was a kid my dad would take me to visit a friend of his who was also a homebrew computer guy. It must have been 78 or 79. He pulled out this 18 inch square PCB with more wirewrap than you’ve ever seen. It looked like a wooly sweater. It was a Z80 processor (I think) that the guy built from scratch because he didn’t want to buy one himself and he probably thought it would be a fun project. I wish I had that now!

  35. Mickey - May 29th, 2009 5:20 pm

    This brings back memories (no pun intended) Back around 1972 I was involved in an IBM schools program where they made various components (not integrated CPUS!) available and some resources that we could wrap our own hardware designs. Of course we didn’t have LCDs or anything like Ks of RAM, and ROM was 2708 (1Kbyte UV EPROM chips) if I recall. Later on I did similar stuff with National Semi’s SC/MP and Signetics 2650 CPUs (I had moved up to 8K RAM by then) – before moving on to Z80’s and the rest is history.
    And beleve it or not, later I had an Apple Lisa at great expense, which became a 9-inch Mac, and swapped for an early IBM PC clone… yada yada…
    Great work – this is a really valuable tool to capture and explain fundamental computing to the kids of today with pre-built off-the-shelf electronics.

  36. Salomon - May 29th, 2009 6:26 pm

    Spaghetti-Western come back…?

  37. […] of Nerdiness (a fantastic project though …) By srmrt Steve Chamberlin has built a Big Mess of Wires! And I feel he needs to be felicitated for […]

  38. Mahesh - May 30th, 2009 2:59 am

    Stevo! You are the dude!

    This is a fantastic project. Congrats!

    I had to blog about this experiment: http://srmrt.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/heights-of-nerdiness-a-fantastic-project-though/

  39. Simon - May 30th, 2009 3:15 am

    VERY impressive!! well done 😀 learning about the subject of CPUs I can really appreciate how complicated it is!

  40. slashdot - May 30th, 2009 5:01 am
  41. mathias - May 30th, 2009 5:23 am

    Simply awesome! Those wiring shots are like a piece of art, love it 😉
    Finding wiring problems/glitches must have been a nihtmare to put it mildly.

  42. Daniel Hauck - May 30th, 2009 5:24 am

    This really takes me back to some long forgotten days. They were harder then, but the lessons I learned are still with me today. We need a kit with instructions sir!! I would like to teach my kids some of this.

    One thing your project had that my projects didn’t was TRUE lower case fonts! Think of how primitive my stuff was without lower case and using cassette tape I/O.

  43. befi - May 30th, 2009 5:33 am

    you’re lucky to have a hp logic analyzer. one of the 16xx series? i got one too, saved me often a lot of trouble.

  44. University grad - May 30th, 2009 6:17 am

    Um, anyone that attends a decent university will build their own computers or CPUs like this in architecture and design classes…

  45. joeblow - May 30th, 2009 6:23 am

    any plans to mass produce them?

  46. Phil - May 30th, 2009 6:25 am

    Steve – I can’t really any more superlatives to what have already been said BUT, this is just so impressive. Something like this demonstrates in real terms that if you put your mind and determination to something, SOMETIMES it just might work out!

    Very, very impressive, I love it! May all your future projects be just as impressive.

    Take care and keep on nutting this stuff out.

    Phil – Perth Western Australia

  47. Donald - May 30th, 2009 6:30 am

    Use an FPGA?

  48. Niels Moseley - May 30th, 2009 6:52 am

    “Keep the hardware complexity to a minimum. I’m not an electrical engineer.”

    Sorry to inform you, Steve: you _are_ an electrical engineer if you can do this!

    Congratulations on the achievement; I’m very impressed (no, I don’t impress easily, hi). Super job!

  49. Jorge Fierro - May 30th, 2009 7:44 am

    Lol… you were featured on Slashdot too!
    Kudos to you, I see the Maker Faire gave you a lot of publicity.

  50. Silverlok - May 30th, 2009 8:16 am

    with that antenna farm of little wires I wonder what the thing would sound like if one could ‘hear’ the EM fields…I dare you to put a theremin on/near it ,Oh and NASA is a bit pissed that you have exposed the secret to the space shuttle flight control computers .

  51. Joe - May 30th, 2009 8:47 am

    Built any viruses for your machine yet?

    Is it really any fun being the last man standing when the rest of the world succumbs?

    You and the few other neo ham radio boy scouts will still be up, running, and working your butt off to save the world while the homogenous network suffers a pandemic. Obama is behind. Too little, too late. Next up: Cell phone & Mac virus coordinated with PC & internet (DNS, Apache, IIS) virus. Cyber warfare is here.

    – Joe

  52. Paul Jurczak - May 30th, 2009 2:04 pm

    Impressive, very impressive!

  53. Tim Doyle - May 30th, 2009 4:46 pm

    We made a much less cool version of BMOW in my CS curriculum.
    We smoked a few boards before actually finishing one that worked.
    That feeling of “Wow, this actually runs!”, so worth the effort (an entire semester).

    Great work and presentation on the site. Thanks!

  54. def3ctive - May 30th, 2009 7:18 pm

    Wow, this is awesome! I’ve always wanted to do something like this but I have always been daunted by the complexity of the wiring. Seeing how well yours has worked has inspired me. Thank you!

  55. DK - May 30th, 2009 7:26 pm

    WOW,

    Some of us like good old VW Beetle.
    Some of us like good old MOS6502/MOS6510.
    Some of us like good old 8-bit computing (microcontrollers)

    But to understand this you got to understand what is simple, good and it works.

    Excellent Work Steve!!!!

    Glad some still understand this Art not many do now days.

    Pure 8-bit Art.
    Pure 8-bit Art…!
    Pure 8-bit Art…..!!!

    *bow, good job!!!!

  56. Steve - May 30th, 2009 9:18 pm

    Thanks again to all those who’ve commented, emailed, or stopped by and said hi at the Maker Faire! If you missed it on Saturday, come see it Sunday!

    A few of the most common questions people asked were:

    – Why didn’t you just use an FPGA? Sure I could have, but I didn’t think that would be very fun. For that matter, why not just write a software simulation of the thing and call it done? No, I wanted to really build the thing to understand it all, not send some VHDL off to a black-box hardwire compiler to be sythesized for a black-box FPGA chip.

    – Why didn’t you use a printed circuit board instead of wire wrap? I considered it. For a design that was mostly proven and just needed to be built, it probably makes sense. But I wanted something I could add to as I went, more like working on an experimenter’s board, with the freedom to add, remove, and change pieces as needed.

    – Why is there no external storage, like a tape, floppy, or hard drive? Again I considered it, but honestly I just never felt I needed one. Most of the software is cross-compiled on the PC and downloaded, or is stored in ROM. There just isn’t really any non-program data outside the ROM that I found a need to store. If I did, I’d probably just add a second 512K RAM with a battery backup, and treat it as a virtual disk.

    – Where are the wires? That question was on the lips of everyone at the Maker Faire today. I never anticipated that the wires would be more interesting than the computer itself. The wires are the interconnect for all the chips, and are on the underside of the system board. When the board is mounted component-side-up in the case, as shown in the third and fourth photos above, the wires are hidden. If I had it all to do over again, I’d built a case with the system board mounted vertically, and windows cut in both sides of the case, so the components and wires would both be visible.

  57. Alek - May 30th, 2009 9:36 pm

    Simply _wonderful_ project. That is something worth of remembering for generations to come.

    As a professional hardware designer/developer I have a great passion for retro projects like this — even if I ain’t as “retro” as my age can tell –, and I have already created quite complex designs of old arcade games for running in (old) FPGA chips. But this is nothing compared to your achievement.

    It is hardly beliavable that this could be actually possible to be done. What about some sort of antenna-effects on real this big mess of wires? What if any wire is broken — did you probe-test them all? More complicated issues, like signal-filtering, problems with inductance or interference, did you have any?

    Absolutely mythical. Congratulations!

  58. Anonymous - May 30th, 2009 9:41 pm

    Привет от красноглазиков!

  59. Steve - May 30th, 2009 10:03 pm

    @Alek: Thanks for compliments, but hardly as noteworthy you suggest. Lots of other people have done similar projects. A great one is Magic-1, which is in the booth right next to mine at Maker Faire, and deserves twice as much publicity as I’ve suddenly been receiving.

    Antenna, interference, and other electrical effects are a problem, but not a large one. The CPU runs at 2MHz, which is comparatively slow. This gives enough time for reflections and other noise to die off before the next clock edge. I tried to avoid laying wires parallel to each other for long distances, to minimize crosstalk. Fan-out limits must be observed, wires kept as short as practically possible, etc. Even so, there are still quite a few signal problems, and some of the signals look pretty horrible on the oscilloscope, yet the CPU still works most of the time. Every now and then it freezes or crashes, which is very likely due to a problem of this kind, but it’s stable enough to run demos and play games with.

    As for testing, broken wires, and so forth– my strategy was to build a little, test a little, so I never went very far after new parts and wires were added before I tested everything again. Then when something did go wrong, I could limit the hunt to a relatively small number of recent changes. Wire breakage wasn’t a problem. Once a wire wrap is in place, it’s quite tight and is unlikely to be loosened or broken unintentionally.

  60. crowelee - May 31st, 2009 5:43 am

    wa,hahahah, strong !!!

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  63. Lazzaro Leonardo Blog » DIY 8-Bit CPU - May 31st, 2009 7:48 am

    […] LINK […]

  64. Safwan Ahmad - May 31st, 2009 11:02 am

    Very nice.

  65. Kieran Bennett - May 31st, 2009 4:19 pm

    Thankyou! That is unbelievably beautiful, you’ve made my day 🙂

    BMOW for the win!

  66. rapper - May 31st, 2009 9:12 pm

    Nice job.

    back in the early ’80s we did stuff like this for prototype minicomputers.

    18″x18″ wire wrap boards though. You could do a schematic, and send it out to a company that had a machine that would wrap the design (given a layout) automatically with a machien for your initial board. Then you’d start debugging…Power and ground wanted to be handled special (short). clocks were always a problem in terms of routing. Boards were really dense with wires (blue). If I remember right, there was a bypass cap on every part, and that was handled special for short vcc/gnd also.

    And then as things got denser, you couldn’t fit all the parts on your target pc board on one wire board, so you’d kludge two and ribbon cable it together. Ribbon cables just made the whole signal integrity problem even worse.

    Things went to hell with the fast edge rates of the TTL parts introduced around then.. remember F-series? etc. Basically the fast edge rates and signal integrity issues made it so prototypes had to be PC boards too.

    220/330 ohm up/down terminations were your friend for signal integrity issues. I always ended up with variants: 330 up/220 down etc. It was like religion 🙂

    We didn’t do any simulation though. You debugged it in the lab. ECOs were in red wire. Each pin was supposed to hold only two wraps. You could fit 3, but that was bad practice. See, on a long net, you wanted to maintain consistency of alternating bottom to bottom and top to top, for each individual wire connecting pins. That way, if you had to break a net, and rewire, you wouldn’t have to take off that many wires. (visualize).

    If you used a hand wrapping tool for all the wires, that was a waste. You should have used a gun. Pull the trigger, and it spins the wrap. The trick used to be to be good enough to get it so the wire insulation was wrapped on your last one wrap. Nick the thin wire and you definitely would get a fragile connection.

    Oh, and flakeys: if you weren’t careful and dropped wires into the mess, then you’d have flakey intermittents that were hard to find.

    I remember one late night where I miswired an ECO, and smoked all the wires in the center of a board. Spent the whole night removing burnt wires and putting new ones back on. Now THAT was a really sucky night. Because you don’t have a consistent description of the current wires. You have to backtrack thru the original netlist and all the ECOs.

  67. Thurstan Johnston - June 1st, 2009 7:51 am

    Simply amazing stuff! This is really inspirational stuff. Wonder if Steve Wozniak has seen this, I bet he would very interested.

  68. jdprueitt - June 1st, 2009 9:37 am

    Congratulations on a very successful project.
    this must have taken a lot!!!of determination.
    maybe you could do a youtube video for all those
    college kids who will graduate without ever using
    a soldering iron or building ANYTHING digital.

  69. Hardy - June 1st, 2009 10:34 am

    What a waste of time 😉

    Just joking … that’s an awesome project!

  70. fluud - June 1st, 2009 1:32 pm

    What are the dimensions of that thing?

  71. Anonymous - June 2nd, 2009 2:24 am

    херня полная – у нас в СССР такое собирали в 80-х.

  72. Anonymous - June 2nd, 2009 2:53 am

    trash!!!!! ссср rulezzzz!!!!

  73. Anonymous - June 2nd, 2009 3:09 am

    цитата: херня полная – у нас в СССР такое собирали в 80-х.
    Согласен с анонимом =)

  74. Anonymous - June 2nd, 2009 3:41 am

    Лично в 10 лет собрал себе такой и было это 1992 году а схема его была взята насколько я припоминаю еще из советского журнала Массовая радио-библиотека за 1989г.

  75. Anonymous - June 2nd, 2009 3:53 am

    русские физики этим на досуге занимаются)

  76. Anonymous - June 2nd, 2009 3:55 am

    PS: Да а на хрен столько проводов есть же двухсторонней текстолит непонят.Да и зачем щас сей шедевр ну ностальгия есть а том времени когда комп надо было споять а непросто в магазе купить ну шас не понимаю.

  77. LANserv - June 2nd, 2009 5:25 am

    хорошая работа, но
    по сравнению с тем, что творили (от слова творить, творчество) советские радиолюбители у себя дома – это детский сад: парень купил и склеил по схеме.

    творчество советских мастеров не прыгнуть никому и не когда !
    CCCР – навсегда страна №1
    creative activity soviet master not to jump nobody and not when !
    USSR – for ever country №1

  78. www.ulagsm.ru - June 2nd, 2009 5:32 am

    You will need to learn Russian now, after the news appeared on one Russian Resource.

    Человек усидчив неимоверно однако, каждую линию спроектировать проложить и закрепить

    обычно одно крепишь второе валится

  79. www.ulagsm.ru - June 2nd, 2009 5:35 am

    An I was thinking that a self-made PC is one I make by screwing up the components from the store in one case like many of us do nowadays…

  80. bat - June 2nd, 2009 10:09 am

    wow amazing, you’re da fucking GOD man 😉

  81. Respect - June 2nd, 2009 10:59 am

    Вы не совсем правы. В СССР собирали самопал на готовых процессорах. Здесь процессор выполнен на рассыпухе.

  82. Anonymous - June 2nd, 2009 3:37 pm

    А в чем сложность та если он его на расcыпухи сделал как не крути все равно это клон Z80

  83. Anonymous - June 2nd, 2009 3:58 pm

    да вот еще прилагаю к этому кампу еще и ПЗУ на ферритовых кольцах сделать автор тогда еще полгода будет с ним возиться. Да и чеге останавливаться надо вес зделать на логических элементов по 4шт в одной микросхем вопщем выдет 2 симпатичных шкафчика)))

  84. Improvised computer - just 1.5 years - June 2nd, 2009 5:15 pm

    […] total, Steve has used about 1250 wires and about 2500 contacts. BMOW project site is located on the address . In addition, Steve Chemberlin even and highly predpriimchiv. Judge for yourself, it offers over […]

  85. Respect - June 2nd, 2009 9:00 pm

    С чего такая уверенность, что это клон Z80 и почему именно Z80? У него свой 24х разрядный микрокод, зашитый в ПЗУ. Очевидно, что и свой микропрограммный автомат. Никакой из популярных восьмибитников не реализовать на таком мизерном объёме простых кристаллов.

  86. User - June 2nd, 2009 9:58 pm

    И всё же кое кто не правильно сравнили то, что делали в СССР- там брали готовые детали, ну что то приходилось из мусора собирать. А тут он как собрал и из чего? Вот от сюда то ноги и растут.
    P.S. И всё равно кто комп такой собрал- молодец! Если наклейки и майки\футболки с эмблемой уже про даёт- то представьте за сколько такую штукенцию на Ebay продать можно!

  87. SanSanych - June 2nd, 2009 10:10 pm

    Great job! Wonderful!
    Excuse me, text below is for lamer above.

    Для тех, кто в танке:
    Дык чтобы понимать, что это не клон ни Z80, ни i8080 – надо знать, какая архитектура у тех была (дело тут даже не в ширине микрокода – тут одноаккумуляторная машинка, банка РОН нет.
    А вот для того, чтобы унизить чужую _работу_ и тем самым как бы стать умнее – достаточно ляпнуть единственное “старое” слово, которое человек знает. Можно даже не понимать что это слово означает 🙂

  88. Russian Engineer - June 2nd, 2009 10:27 pm

    Вспомнилась молодость, когда сам подобных монстрятиков собирал.
    Только в наше-то время сие выглядит как мазахизм,
    при наличии программируемой логики,
    в которую можно не только всю подобную схему
    упихнуть почти не напрягаясь, но и покруче наворотить!

  89. Aq_ - June 2nd, 2009 11:01 pm

    Сколько читаю камменты, хамство обнаружил только от русскоязычных пользователей. Теперь я лучше понимаю иностранцев, когда они говорят, что все русские — дебилы и проститутки. Печально ;(

    Стив — молодец! Long Life BMOW!

    Пусть поскорее выйдет BMOW-2 на SMD-элементах. It should be BMOS, what is the Big Mess Of Solder!

  90. Cheap - June 2nd, 2009 11:33 pm

    if two computers play each other in chess? Would the computer that went first always win?

  91. дебилы и проститутки - June 3rd, 2009 12:17 am

    “Сколько читаю камменты, хамство обнаружил только от русскоязычных пользователей. Теперь я лучше понимаю иностранцев, когда они говорят, что все русские — дебилы и проститутки. Печально ;(

    Стив — молодец! Long Life BMOW!”

    Зы, а мне тебя почему то жаль…может потому что ты инвалид? Уйобывай ка к Стиву жить, я посмотрю как тебя там будут любить ))) интеллигентишка наш ^_#…

    P.S. русских везде ненавидят

  92. Nicola - June 3rd, 2009 6:24 am

    Ха. Ну крут 🙂 Не надо тут показывать знание рус. языка !
    Кто выпендривается пусть покажет, что он сделал, а не бросает слова на ветер.

  93. Anonymous - June 3rd, 2009 6:35 am

    Для тех кто щитает что тут Стива унизили ни кто не ково унижать не собирался просто сей произведения не имеет смысла вот и все на данный момент Да и вот чеге еще тем чем собирал его Стив нельзя сравнить с тем чем я его собирал на ГОТОВЫХ БУ ЧИПАХ 18 лет назат (инструмент был разный)вот если бы ему тем деребасам компы липить
    PS ДЛЯ НЕПОНЯТЛИВЫХ РОССИЯН Я НЕ ХАМЛЮ СТИВУ Я ТАК ПРОСТО ВЫРАЗИЛ СВАЕ МНЕНИЕ И ВСЕ!!!

  94. dx4cpc - June 3rd, 2009 8:44 am

    skynet!!! Its Skynet!!!! fuck!!!

  95. dx4cpc - June 3rd, 2009 8:44 am

    me cago en la putaaaaaaaaa

  96. Svetlio - June 5th, 2009 1:03 am

    Man,
    You’re slightly crazy, but I’m amazed. Next project might be transistor based :)! This is hardwared software so hardwired.
    You rule!

  97. Anonymous - June 5th, 2009 3:12 am

    你的这个也太牛了吧

  98. Brandon - June 7th, 2009 8:37 pm

    Lol Steve. Looks like all these people coming here could murder your server. Poor thing, having to serve up to this many people. 😛

  99. 诗诺比 - June 12th, 2009 12:57 am

    真NB呀!!
    OurAvr观光团

  100. pan - June 12th, 2009 3:20 am

    OurAvr观光团

  101. […] auch mal ohne groe Kupfermonstrsitten ging. Bei den Bildern fllt mir grad noch das hier ein: Big Mess o Wires BMOW Project Summary __________________ Desktop: Athlon64x2 5600+ | Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 | 4GB Corsair DDR2 800 | […]

  102. […] το χόμπι του είναι τα ηλεκτρονικά και οι κατασκευές, έφτιαξε εξ αρχής έναν επεξεργαστή, χρησιμοποιώντας καλώδια (!) […]

  103. R. - July 10th, 2009 10:28 am

    Oh my god!!! This is breathtaking!!!
    Don’t build some crazy machine and take over human beings, ok?
    p.s.: Looks like you got some international attention already. Prepare to be overwhelmed by tourist groups from all over the world!

  104. Justin - July 26th, 2009 10:45 pm

    太牛了!无法想象怎样用这么多线把元器件连接起来的。
    你已经不是人了,是神!

  105. Рубен Павленко - August 20th, 2009 9:54 am

    Спасибочки за возможность оставлять комментарии на Вашей странице!

  106. […] В общи линии, Стив е използвал около 1250 проводника и 2500 контакта. Подробности за неговия проект можете да видите на този адрес. […]

  107. haccababababa - November 26th, 2009 2:39 am

    wow you even have anti aliasing circuits for video output? I mean .. How many flops does this thrash does? Can you tell me?

  108. 刀客 - August 4th, 2010 9:55 pm

    非常厉害,这么多线,我肯定会弄错几百根的

  109. ztutz - March 16th, 2011 10:24 am

    and the waka to the beat

    es kann nur einen geben auf der großen weiten welt — kds one leipzig

    im bozz

  110. Tinycontrols - August 4th, 2011 10:16 am

    and it works 🙂 Amazing is all I can say …

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