Hardware Glitches
Just after I wrote last week’s entry, the hardware went from proudly proclaiming “BMOW is alive!” to merely stating “BMOW is aliv”. I was able to track this down to a problem with the program counter chip. Often, but not…
Year 2008
BMOW Is Alive!
Everything seems to be falling into place now. I think a picture says it best: The LCD is up and running, displaying messages from the ROM program. I wasn’t lucky enough to have it work on the first try this…
First Bootup!
It works!!! Eureka! And on the very first attempt, no less. I have achieved computation from a big mess o’ wires, and a couple of dozen basic logic chips. I can now say confidently that fibonacci(12) = 144. Check out…
Almost There
I’m getting very close to the first real BMOW bootup. I’ve got two data registers wired up, along with enough of the data bus to use them. Now I just need to double-check the current wiring, add the rest of…
Straight Line Code
Believe it or not, I think this pig may actually fly! Things are starting to get interesting. After several more days of wiring, I’ve reached the point where I can execute straight line code (no branches or jumps), with no…
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…
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