The Components are Coming

I have just ordered all the components left to order for the computer.  Hopefully they will come within the next few weeks.  I shipped them using the postal service, so no guarantees.

Pictures will be coming, probably starting with the general-purpose AC line voltage to 5 volt converter.

EEPROM Troubles

All sorts of stuff is coming in, and along with it I realized that I didn't get enough EEPROM.  Good thing it was on the website where I am ordering the rest of my components.

Architecture

That last post had been sitting in Drafts for over 2 weeks, so I felt like I just had to get it out.  Anyway, most of the parts have either been ordered or are in shopping carts.

The general architecture is pretty striaghtfoward.  It was mostly taken from the book The Elements of Computing Systems, by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken.  Probably its most attractive feature is that its control logic consists of 2 or 3 ICs containing in total maybe two dozen MOSFET transistors.  Most of the instructions are essentially microcoded.  For example, as long as bit 15 of the instruction is 1, bits 11-6 of the opcode go directly to the ALU.  The computer is a Harvard architecture, but that can easily be modified into a  modified Harvard architecture.

So, anyway, I will be quite possibly posting a variety of pictures at some point.

In The Beginning

I am building myself a 16-bit computer.

You all think I'm crazy, right?  I mean, "Who builds themselves a computer?"  Well, I do.  Honestly, it's more interesting than just getting any old computer from Best Buy.  (Note to Best Buy:  This is not intended to be offensive.)

More details will follow.