Nothing physical to show yet...

I have mostly finished designing the ALU (the part that does the math and stuff).

I have said before I have started building it, but it turns out soldering wires to connect each chip doesn't work, so I've decided to solder the chips on a PCB with tracks (the metal lines on the surface on the circuit board that conducts electrical signals), which means less work (no fiddling with wires and that).

The thing is, these PCBs are pricey to buy and to put the tracks on, so I have to design the entire thing before I build it as mistakes are not recoverable, which is a complete shift in the way I'm doing this...

Before, with the wires and soldering, I could build a section first, and if it fails or needs to be changed, I could just modify the design by connecting the wires elsewhere.

At the moment, I'm halfway through designing the register file, which is the bit that serves as the computers temporary storage place for data that is being worked on by the processor (for example, adding two numbers together), which is a challenge as the chips I am using can hold 8 bits of data, and I think I need a minimum of 8 registers, each 64 bits wide, which means I need 64 such chips.

Its not so much the number of chips, but the number of tracks that these chips need... its hard to explain without going on and on (everyone need coffee? :p ), but the number of tracks required means its hard to fit on a single average sized PCB...

After this bit is done, I have to design the control unit, which manages the computer, the memory board, which has SRAMs for the main memory, before doing any building, which will take a long time itself since I am not soldering wires any more (and needs another page to talk about).

After this, I might make a video card for this... nothing fancy, it will be in black and white, be really slow as the processor will fill in as the GPU. Essentially, for those who are into electronics, it is a dumb frame buffer.

Also planned is a tape drive! :p

The memory board uses SRAMs, which looses the info stored in it when the power goes out. I need some place to store things.

A keyboard would be useful too, but I probably "bolt" a normal one on...

At the current rate, I think I will have photos to show by next year, lol!

Ultimate goal: have Pong up and running by the end of 2009! Seriously!

Anyone who wants to have a shot at writing Pong for me, please do say so! :p