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Nibbler PCB Build

nibbler-buchholz

William Buchholz has designed and built a PCB version of my Nibbler 4-bit CPU for his local hackerspace. Nibbler is built entirely from standard 7400 series logic chips – individual counters, registers, buffers, and gates. It’s an educational example of a simple CPU that’s easy to understand and build, but still capable of running games and other interesting programs.

In addition to converting my messy wire-wrap job into an elegant PCB, William also made some component substitutions, including a larger program ROM. Using jumpers connected to the upper 5 address lines, you can select between several different programs without having to reprogram the ROM. More photos of William’s work are here and the schematics and design files are here.

Read 4 comments and join the conversation 

4 Comments so far

  1. Smartin - July 21st, 2015 9:16 pm

    Unfortunately the Tindie link does not work.

    https://www.tindie.com/products/wmbuchholz/nibbler-4-bit-homebrew-cpu-pcb.

    I realise this is not part of Steve’s site, but I could find no-where else to make this comment.

    Smartin…

  2. Charles - July 29th, 2015 11:21 am

    awesome thanks for offering this pcb.

  3. MikeG - December 11th, 2015 1:05 pm

    I enjoyed bulding the Nibbler on the breadboard so much that I decided to also do the PCB version.
    The board is very nice and it only took a couple of hours to solder. I turned it on and it works!
    There are small changes in the board compared to the original design so I had to buy a few extra ICs.
    Thank you Steve and William.

  4. William - July 1st, 2016 1:41 pm

    I decided to build an enclosure for this as part of learning how to use a laser cutter and 3D printer. The results can be found here:
    http://imgur.com/a/EoxX9

    I have also moved all the design files over to GitHub:
    https://github.com/pong74ls/Nibbler

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