Ask HN: I'd like to learn how to build a computer • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: I'd like to learn how to build a computer

#11

Post by girvo » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 2:40 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #3

Google "NAND2tetris" or NAND to Tetris A professor from tel aviv university has done just this - using a virtual hardware emulator there are twelve courses (Approx one full term of study) starting with NAND gates and building nor gates etc, progressing to arithmetic units, CPUs, compilers and eventually writing a game based on a oo language. It's exciting for me (there is a book and I am still early days) but really…

Brilliant! I was tempted to build a CPU using logic gates, but in the interests of brevity thought an OTS processor was the better idea. Will check out that talk for sure however!

Re: Ask HN: I'd like to learn how to build a computer

#12

Post by girvo » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 2:41 PM UTC

ColinWright wrote: post #2

I built my own Z80 based micro to power a micro-mouse. Shoot me an email telling me what you already know, and I'll tell you what you need to read up and and get started with.

Expect an email tomorrow (Australian time) :)

Re: Ask HN: I'd like to learn how to build a computer

#13

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 2:54 PM UTC

girvo wrote: post #10

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #7

Pretty fun, but maybe not as educational as it might be. No modern microprocessor looks or functions much like the Z80. You could build a 'telephone' with a carbon mike and diaphram speaker and it would tell you as much about the cellular telephone system.

Ahhhh, I meant educational in the embedded device sort of realm... Although ill be honest, it's more for fun than anything else :)

Oh! Thats an entirely different matter. The Z80 is very cool, many different versions to choose from. It benefits from a very regular machine code (simple register fields, 2- or 5-bit opcode field), you can memorize it in half an hour.

And its still used embedded. My son wrote a simulator for a Z80 version that's flying on Juno (Jupiter space mission). It was coupled with an FFT engine for processing ice-penetrating radar signals. Lots of fun. SpaceX was interested in him out of college, but that was mostly an IT position.

Anyway of all the embedded systems I've used, I am fondest of the Z80 architecture. Good choice!

Re: Ask HN: I'd like to learn how to build a computer

#14

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 3:00 PM UTC

girvo wrote: post #10

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #7

Pretty fun, but maybe not as educational as it might be. No modern microprocessor looks or functions much like the Z80. You could build a 'telephone' with a carbon mike and diaphram speaker and it would tell you as much about the cellular telephone system.

Ahhhh, I meant educational in the embedded device sort of realm... Although ill be honest, it's more for fun than anything else :)

One of my favorite Z80 clones was, I think, the Z800(?). It had several register sets you could explicitely switch between. For instance, one for the timer interrupt, one for the main thread, one for a serial thread. Hyperthreads, years before anybody else had them! But it never caught on.

Re: Ask HN: I'd like to learn how to build a computer

#15

Post by hemtros » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 3:18 PM UTC

The best book for this is "Elements of Computing System" by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken. It starts from basic gates and then higher to build more complex parts. The book website provides all the necessary emulators and programming tools that help you to build a emulated computer and then build OS and application softwares on top of it. I have not really gone through the whole book and practiced what it wants to teach us because of my busy academic schedules but hope to complete it someday soon.

Re: Ask HN: I'd like to learn how to build a computer

#16

Post by bencollier49 » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 4:31 PM UTC

I'm doing the same thing at the moment! Good luck!

I put some links up on my site here:

http://www.bencollier.info/links

Re: Ask HN: I'd like to learn how to build a computer

#17

Post by X4 » Thu, Mar 07, 2013, 2:41 PM UTC

girvo wrote: post #9

X4 wrote: post #4

imho: Stop wasting your time understanding PCs. If you're still curious just follow the link trails: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer You'll land here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture or here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_architecture 1) Create your own computable language or understand binary 2) Think of ways to store/load and process the data in that language 2.1) Think of…

Hehe followed that train of thought through to #3 already :) cheers for the links, I'll check the simulation stuff out :)

Glad you did that already, shows class. Like to share your findings? Did you discover something new?