High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch • Hacker News Board

Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch

#71

Post by kragen » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 4:59 AM UTC

Almaviva wrote: post #14

Connecting this with the article about the person who smelted his own sword, I wonder if it's possible for one person to single-handedly build a computer starting from Stone Age technology and raw materials?

The mechanical-Turing-machine link http://hackaday.com/2011/03/25/mechanical-turing-machine-can... posted by chris11 is some kind of evidence here. I've also been thinking about this problem myself.

http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2010-June/00... are some thoughts about possible low-tech digital logic techniques. https://github.com/kragen/calculusvaporis has some thoughts about how to build a reasonably practical non-bit-serial CPU out of only about 1000 NAND gates (or the equivalent.) I think that with the height-field approach described in the kragen-tol post, you could probably make it out of 1000 moving parts — although most of them would have to be machined to fairly tight tolerances. I think the level of mechanical difficulty is similar to a 1960s V6 engine (fewer parts, but much higher force and demands on precision), or a little higher than that of a Curta calculator (600 parts for Type I).

The Clock of the Long Now uses steel gears on stone and ceramic bearings. It contains some mechanical binary calculation (and the prototypes are the most beautiful machines I've ever seen) but it's not a programmable computer.

Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch

#72

Post by kragen » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 5:11 AM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #18

Almaviva wrote: post #14

Connecting this with the article about the person who smelted his own sword, I wonder if it's possible for one person to single-handedly build a computer starting from Stone Age technology and raw materials?

I'm going to say "no", assuming that when you say "computer", you mean transistor-based. I am not an expert on the subject, but I suspect making a facility that can manufacture thousands or millions of transistors, and then operating that facility would take obscenely more man-hours than one man has. Even if his goal was only a 4004, or even just a bunch of breadboards full of TO-92's. Vacuum tube based might be poss…

Jeri Ellsworth has succeeded in making individual transistors on her own, but she didn't have to purify the materials herself. But it didn't take her a lifetime either.

In "Designing Analog Chips", Hans Camenzind tells the story of designing the 555 timer chip; he did the whole design, without a computer, up to cutting the masks out of Rubylith. It took him several months of nonstop work.

Based on these, I extrapolate that one person could do all the physical steps involved in bootstrapping to a computer from stone-age technology. (I won't say "one man", because that person might have to be Jeri.) And I think they could probably do it in substantially less than a lifetime.

But I don't think it would be possible for one person to do all the intellectual work, or it would have happened long before the advent of agriculture.

And I think it would be a lot more fun to do it with some friends.

Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch

#73

Post by yoyoyogi » Mon, Jun 20, 2011, 5:27 AM UTC

derrida wrote: post #44

yoyoyogi wrote: post #34

I thought we all did this?

Where is your computer?

Sold the parts to an undergrad cmpe student.

Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch

#74

Post by conradev » Sat, Jun 25, 2011, 5:29 PM UTC

slunk wrote: post #68

conradev wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not speaking against this kid in particular, what he did was cool, but there are plenty of high school kids who can write professional quality code (in a multitude of languages) and know a lot about the internals of a computer. Speaking from experience, its annoying when age becomes a matter of importance.

It might just be the high school I attended but I can only think of one kid out of about 3000 in the entire school who was intimidatingly competent with computers. I can see where you're coming from. Making too big of a deal out of his age might be annoying to some people but with age comes experience and all the anecdotal evidence at my disposal says that most high schoolers don't have this experience yet. :/

"one kid out of about 3000 in the entire school who was intimidatingly competent with computers."

Thats me, although there are ~2000 kids at my school.