Yay. I’ve been following this since he first started. I am actually just getting started on a similar project. (7400 logic gates for a CPU. I myself will be doing point-to-point soldering… Blah! Soldering is already a huge chore :P)

represent, clay.

Nice work!
The true hard core wrappers only use one colour of wire though. :)

Nice work… although honestly, what’s the point of this? I am not taking any merits of the amazing work, but why?

@ newton.
why? because he could!
that’s why we all do the stuff we do :)
we don’t need any other reason :)

Gorgeous and well worth the time put into it.

I have always thought homebrew computer architectures were extremely cool, though I’ve never dared leave the nice cozy world of my simulations and FPGAs. :)

why would anyone do this?
… well curiosity! good old Hacker character!
honestly i couldn’t do it, but it’s admirable work!

Thanks for all the comments! BMOW is my project, and I’ve been working on it for over a year now. I spend a couple of hours here and there on evenings and weekends, and yes I have a regular job, family, and kids! As to why anyone would do this, um, you’ve got me there. Yes it is a real custom CPU, along with custom video display and audio circuitry, keyboard interface, and so on. It’s a mix of 74xx parts, 22v10s, and a few purpose-specific chips for audio and video. It all adds up to something vaguely like an Apple II.

Omg epic shit =)

it makes me happy when pepople are willing to do stuff like this just for the lulz. :3

The point is, the knowledge of HOW basic elements of our technology work is becoming a rare commodity. If there is a major disruption to the Asian Tech Umbilical Cord, being able to keep things going will require people who can design and repair down down to the component level. Ham radio operators have known this for decades.

awesome work mate, i love the 3 voice audio too! reminds me alot of the simpler times…

A mate of mine has been working on something similar over at kaput.homeunix.org, cept he cheated and soldered point to point, however he made his own bus system. it was the same machine that was used in the 8080 Still Alive (portal) video on youtube.

love ya work, keep it up!

One bloke I used to work for, built a graphics processor for a head mounted display system, back in the early 90s, as part of his masters degree. The rig consisted of around 6 wire wrap boards (maybe more), each about 50x50cm in size. It was very impressive, it had its own dedicated multiplier circuits and other crazy arithmetic functions consisting of discrete chips.

Amazing. Well done commander!

Imagine the supercomputing power if connected in parallel. Years in the making

programmable logic chips? please.

http://www.cca.org/tech/rcs/pdp12.html

I owned a few of these in the past, that’s where you can really get some appreciation for wire-wrapping and detailed logic. And core memory!

Among other features were the front panel with a separate light for EVERYTHING (not like the PDP-8/e which used a single row of indicators and a rotary selector so you could only see one “batch” at a time) and fully variable speed from one instruction per minute or whatever up to full, and with LINC mode it could boot from a magnetic tape with a single command from the front panel.

The CRT tube (worked like an oscilliscope, all text characters had to be “Drawn”) could be used as a “terminal display” with only the keyboard of the usual printing terminal (teletype) used for input, saves a lot of paper that way!

Being a “lab” machine it had A/D and D/A connections plus binding posts to six SPDT relays
which also each had their own indicator lights on the panel!

And all of the logic was discrete, each register was broken down and two bits of each was on a separate flip-chip card wire-wrapped to the others!

Great old systems, wish I still had one just to show the fancy-pants kids…