We love squeezing every last bit of silicon goodness out of a tiny chip, or at least we delight in seeing it done. Today’s analog/digital hack is one of the sweetest we’ve seen in a while. And it’s also a little bit of a puzzle, so don’t scroll down to the answer until you’ve given the schematic a good think-over.
DUO BINARY is a very, very small computer system in every possible sense. It runs on an ATtiny84, which has even got “tiny” in its name. The user interface is a single button for data entry and a single LED for feedback, making this binary keyboard look frivolously over-complicated. It uses a devilish chimera of Morse code and a truncated ASCII to enter data, and the LED blinks the same back at you.
We’re guessing that [Jack Eisenmann] is the only person in the world who can control this thing, and you can watch him doing so in the video embedded below. Continue reading “Minimal Computer And Operating System: One Button, One LED”
First there were text games, then came 2D dungeons. When Wolfenstein 3D broke out on the gaming scene, it created quite a fuss. But if all you’ve got is a strip of WS2812 LEDs, those are a few dimensions too many.
[treibair] has started up a project on Hackaday.io to develop 1D video games to be played on a single LED strip. While the end application is something with a cool physical interface, probably driven by a microcontroller, prototyping is a lot easier on the big computer. He’s writing it in Processing, though, so that the transition to the Arduino is easier in the end.
There are a couple of other games out there in 1D, including Line Wobbler (YouTube) and, naturally, Wolfenstein 1D. We even saw a one-dimensional “snake” clone at Make Munich a few months back. (Would the author please stand up?)
We think the idea is a good one, and lining up everyone’s 1D gaming experience in one place would be a great help. So link up code and reviews in the comments!
Continue reading “Video Games In As Few Dimensions As Possible”
This may be the most minimal computer that we’ve ever seen running BASIC. Hackaday.io user [Kodera2t] has been working through the history of computing, so after his 4-bit CPU, he stepped up his game to eight bits. It’s amazing how much can be done with so little. It’s basically a Z80 on a single PCB.
[Kodera2t] is careful to give credit where credit is due: the design of this computer is by [Grant Searle]. It’s amazing what you can do with an old CPU (6809), some SRAM, a controller-interface chip, and an EPROM for your BASIC. Check out the GitHub for the computer’s PCB files if you want to make your own — it’s a very hobbyist-friendly two-layer board with fat traces. Or you could put it all together on a breadboard. It’s that non-critical.
The other sweet touch is this monochrome CRT build that pairs up with the tiny computer.
[Kodera2t] is doing some really clever retro and minimalistic hacks, and putting them all up on Hackaday.io. You should really give his whole portfolio a look. We recently wrote up his experimentations with the Atmel ATtiny10 if you’re in the mood for something more modern.
