“Zero overhead” Z80 computer focuses on performance

z80_wirewrap_computer_zero_overhead

There’s something quite satisfying about building your own computer. Nowadays, constructing your own desktop PC is relatively easy, so if you really want to get your hands dirty, you have to take a step back in time and give some vintage hardware a spin.

[YT2095] has spent a good portion of the last two months building a computer based … Read the rest

Electromechanical computer built from relays

This is Zusie, a computer built out of electromechanical relays. [Fredrik Andersson] picked up a lot of about 100 telephone exchange circuit boards, each with about 16 relays on them. After getting to know a heat gun really well he ended up with 1500 working relays with which to play. The machine runs slowly, it iss noisy, but it … Read the rest

Wire-wrapping an LED matrix

Regular reader [Osgeld] built a 1024 LED display matrix. This is a proof-of-concept design and he admittedly has overloaded the components. Most notably, the 595 shift registers (featured over the weekend) are sourcing too much current if all eight pins are active. That’s easy enough to fix in the next design by moving up to cascading LED … Read the rest

Automated guitar pickup winding

[Robert Pickering] shares his automated guitar pickup winder with us. He built it for his senior project at Old Dominion University. Two stepper motors are used to wind the magnet wire around the pickup hardware. The unit is PIC based and about six minutes into the video (embedded after the break) you can see that he used wire wrapping for … Read the rest

Hackaday links: April 18, 2010

Remote motion control

This project walks though a method of controlling motors with an accelerometer when the two are physically separated. Two Arduinos are used, with the user interface and the motor control connected via Ethernet. This must be useful for something; maybe it should be the next step once you get your accelerometer up and running.

CNC machine Read the rest

BMOW: a home made cpu

bmow

Building your own CPU sounds like quite a daunting task as it is. Building your own CPU using manual wire wrapping transcends difficult to become an art form. [Steve] has built a CPU by manually wrapping every single wire. That’s 1253 wires, or 2506 wrapped ends. Even if it didn’t work, it would be nice to look at. But it … Read the rest