4. The ALU could have been replaced by a single chip My guy, the entire computer can be replaced by a single chip. I think, implementing the ALU yourself is a big part of the achievement and fun.
@@brostenen In implementing everything yourself? Well if you didn't find that fun, you wouldn't build a bread board computer in the first place! One of the main components of a basic pc is the alu. It just makes sense to build it yourself imo.
@@barmetler But you can do all of that... the ALU, registers, hardware AND microcode instruction decode... all of it in an FPGA. All of your learning and accomplishments will be just as valid, except for the "joys" of physical breadboarding. I did wirewrapped prototype computer boards back in the Bad Old Days and I'd rather not do it again. Praise be to today's Asian PCB houses and to programmable logic ICs.
I feel like going from TTL logic chips to transistors themselves, isn't too big a leap; on the other hand, you need a whole industrial setup to make transistors.
Damn. I was about to say that. I really, really want to see him take this as far as physically possible... Although he should really do them on a small scale, like a video about making a logic gate as proof of concept and a video about making a transistor
silicone is the rubbery material breast implants are made from. Silicon is a chemical element that integrated circuits are built upon using chemical baths, lithography, and etching.
I remember my brother built a binary/octal/decimal/hexadecimal converting computer using ic’s hand wrapped on perf board when he was an 8th grader because he got into an argument with his math teacher over letters being numbers (hex) and not just as a variable. It took him a week to design, and 2-months to build, he took 2nd place at the regional science fair (losing to a bubble memory demo the kid’s dad brought in from his work) My brother used switches to cycle through the modes and lamps to show the converted binary and red digital displays for the hex numbers. There was a keypad to enter the base 10 number to convert. The 80’s were a great time to be a kid. I thought it was cool.
haha what an achievement "yeah I came second at the regional science fair because i made a computer that was only 20 years behind its time all from scratch without any prebuilt items to prove some year 8 maths to my maths teacher"
I'm impressed you can keep track of anything through that jungle of wires. And that you managed to connect everything without wires jumping out and loose connections and everything. But honestly, I'm impressed you made this work. Good job.
| without wires jumping out and loose connections and everything no, no, there were plenty of those. more hours spent finding them than I want to count 🥲
We built breadboard computers like this in high school (mid-80's). We were put into groups of 3-4 people, given the schematic, BOM and told to go build it. The design used a 74181 as the brains. We didn't have a display and all we had for output were LEDs and 7-segment displays. LCD? LOL. FWIW this was a few years before VGA was even a thing. I don't think any group actually got the whole thing to work but some groups got some sub-systems to work.
Can you invert this binary tree? I've coded threaded red-black binary trees from scratch. But can you invert this binary tree? I designed your CPU and graphics card. So you can't invert this binary tree? Yes, I can invert this binary tree. PROVE IT, BUCKO! Okay, which language? You choose. Siri. Ok, go ahead. "Computer? Hello, computer? Invert this binary tree."
You are practicing a lost art, my man! Sure, it's a relatively simple computer, but I imagine a day when, given enough knowledge, one might have enough components available to build a more complex system. Perhaps not quite to the degree of what we have nowadays, in mainstream computing, but certainly something more complex. Great job! You've earned a subscriber.
I started something similar a few years ago. I only used ICs when I'd already built the equivalent with transistors - so an IC with 8 AND gates could only be used once I'd built a few AND gates without ICs. Started from limited electronics knowledge and got as far as having a circuit producing the Fibonacci sequence with LEDs displaying memory content. So at that point I had basic memory handling and felt I understood everything I needed to do to get a working computer but gave up at the point of defining an instruction set. The initial aim was to achieve that level of understanding so I wasn't convinced I wanted to keep adding breadboards having achieved my aim. So your collected mass of breadboards brought back memories. I think this is a great thing to have a go at for anyone with enough interest; even if you don't take it all the way.
Congratulations! And special congratulations for your poor design decisions. Doing the wrong thing, and then realizing why it was wrong is the one of the most important elements of projects like this.
:O Hey, thanks! It really means a lot from you - the Magic-1 was a big inspiration for this project, I remember watching your videos on it a lot when I was younger and visiting your website and all.
The legend himself. @Bill, have you considered coming to any of the VCF this year? I know that you were planning to last year but I believe it was canceled.
@@Roanokekidstech I retired and moved to Oregon - so if there's ever another VCF (or similar) event) in the Portland/Seattle area, I'll be sure to attend with Magic-1.
This is a staggering achievement; you should be proud. Never think it was a waste of your time. You can progress to better design and product manufacture. Great video.
Having literally just finished my computer architecture course at university yesterday, it was really nice being able to actually understand some of the things you're talking about in this video lol.
@@denvercox7675 Definitely. In my case, being a CS major, the class was required, but I would still recommend it even if its not. The final project, at least in my class, was to design a CPU. So you essentially learn how to do exactly what jdh does in this video, minus the real-life building of the computer and the external I/O things like the graphics card. It's really interesting to see how relatively simple computers are when you break them down to their most basic components: just a lot of logic gates.
@Denver Cox Aaaay am finishing one next week. I will say though that whether it's a good course or not will depend *entirely* on your professor and how they teach: mine is an absolute slog. Ask people who took the class at your uni.
Congratz :D And on learning from the not so great design choices. I'd love to see you build a sound card on the breadboards next as in like the 8 bit sound chips, but in discrete logic/component form. Would prob be complicated, but I haven't seen anyone do it before.
This seems like one of those 2am video ideas where you completely ignore the difficulty and only focus on how awesome it would be to pull it off. Absolutely insane man. Great job.
I've recommended this channel to friends as someone descending into madness. What started off as low level interest has now resulted in this, a whole ass computer done nearly all by hand.
it's really sad sometimes for me look at the number of comments and asking myself if i would ever get read, and afraid that my contribution is that minor will annoy more than help. But I'm happy telling you, SO THERE YOU WERE BUSY THAT ALL TIME MAN. Missed a lot your great contributions to the community, but you come back with the best of you. I truly love this hand-made with logic parts computer.
If I were you, I would be too damn tempted to create a 3D software rasterizer on that thing. Just imagine having your own self build computer and then run a 3D demo makes me stuff of my wet dreams. But a god damn cool project that you did.
This comment is right below a "can it run crysis" joke for me, and it now has me wondering if it'd be possible to port Doom to this hardware... It's been ported to sillier things before.
@@SolarShado my comment is almost not meant as a joke. Like visible on my channel I really enjoy graphics programming, so this is something that I would really enjoy doing. Especially programming with limited ressources is quite satisfying. So it would be really cool to see a Doom port but that's probably not feasible. But who knows?
Nice work and excellent video. My CPU design has registers: IR, PC, Flags, A, B, M (RAM address), S (one-position "stack"), and index register called X, which is always added to M. Results of math always is placed on the stack. My 16 instructions are: ADD, AND, NOT, OR, SHR (shift right), SUB, XOR, LDA (load A immediate), PSHr, POPr, STA (stores A into M+X), RDM (reads M+X)., JC, JN, JV, JZ. Since any compare is just a subtract that sets the flags and doesn't alter the A register, I don't bother with a compare, I just use the SUB. Addresses are 12 bits. instructions are 16, which is 12-bits plus 4 for the opcode.
This was what my first from-scratch computer looked like; the 'mcDonalds arches'; after you've done a few you start trying to lay ther wires in a buss form, along the breadboards... but as a noob, it always becomes this big mess. Problem I ran into, running at any real speed (Mhz+), was the arches seemed to have a capcitance issue against the breadboards, causing all kinds of issues slowing moving around the boards .. like a cloud of trouble :) Using a metal cookie tray underneath seemed to help somehow at the time, but just making PCBs (way easier than I thought at first), with lots of ground plane etc, worked amazingly well. Amazing job, and love the videos!
Also .. what do you do with it now? Convert the schematic to a PCB and populate that, and then you can have it for life; I found with all these giant stacks of breadboards (glued, to actual bread cutting boards, muahuahua), is just a nightmare, and after a couple weeks there'll be all kinds of wires loose or dust in the way or something,a nd it all goes to crap :/ All those arches of wires are hard to store!
Wow. You have my respect. I have a similar project.... I'm close to finishing my all transistor and diode based digital clock. And believe me, everything is fun until you have to deal with analog problems in digital circuitry^^.
First of all amazing work. Similar project was part of our Computer Architecture curriculum, We had to do it in groups of three, within 48 allocated lab hours, over span of two months, the trick is to use single solid core cables, cut them up to desired length and lay them out on breadboard like PCBs. My finger tips just got sore, thinking about all the wire bending i had to do.
That thing is cool! I can't imagine how many hours you spent on working on that just to make it out put hi on the screen. That must have taken a long time, and probably a lot of debugging to say the least. Really cool that it works and man it looks pretty complex dispite its simple instruction set. I will be checking out the hour long video as well because I'm interested in how this works in more detail then whats shown here. Awesome job on the content and I really enjoy your videos! Honestly it inspires me to do some cool programming and CS videos on my channel. Thanks for the content!
Just recently following Ben Eaters 6502 computer build using the said chip, and a couple outher ROM/RAM chips and video controller. This is absolutely the next level. LOVE IT. I just recently purchased 'Turing Logic' from steam, and it is following this very process: build the computer using transistor based logic gates, program in binary, create an assmbler language, write a bare metal 'OS'/game.
At 11 minutes when you were going over your regrets about not just using an already built ALU chip it sparked a thought that since you built the ALU from scratch, why not just keep breaking it down until you're building everything from scratch, including your own logic gates. Next video will probably be you gathering sand on the beach then melting it down yourself and forming the silicon into your own chips lmao
He'll need to get in some copper mining too, and mix up some polymers to coat the wires. ;) You laugh, but my money is on this guy for president of the NCR after the US and China blow up the world.
Gathering send and making semiconductor components is totally unnecessary. One can build any digital logic using only NOR or NAND gates. So all he needs is to build these from tubes and resistors. There are channels on YT of ppl building "computers" only with vacuum tubes and resistors.
But it goes one step farther than jdh has, so far - building a high-level language compiler for it. Maybe if jdh doesn't go there, then I, an electrical engineer, might.
Id say it is a nice project and it seems you had a lot of fun. Now you can slowly improve it untill reaches 1990 level. 99% dont know how to build a computer from scratch ,but you now know.
Back in the day, I was a (to the component) technician on the AN/UYK-7 computers. The most sophisticated IC in the CPU(s) was a quad d-latch. Sub clocking was done by analog delay line. I've always had a thought of doing a project like yours. Thanks for convincing me to skip that project.
hey! i very very much like to see all your projects and have followed all of your videos with great attention because theyre just great! however, i'd hate to see your minecraft project die, i think its one of the coolest coding projects on youtube, and i would love to see some actual gameplay, wouldnt it also be great if more and more people helped and joined in with the code writing, and having an awesome minecraft remake entierly made in C? in my opinion, its way too awesome not to finish it!
When the webcam turned on I was surprised, I didn't think nerdy smart people could be also so beautiful! This project is awesome except the wires which looks like a mess, but my fav video is still the one where you created the CPU instructions for no reason 🤣
@@Link-channel I know both channels! I have very mixed feelings about 8-bit guy, since he’s not as knowledgeable as he’d like people to think, and doesn’t react well to being called out for doing dumb stuff. Just feels to me like he prefers to rush out a video than to do research to properly honor the gems he often has in his hands, and he doesn’t treat rare things with the care they deserve.
I had not thought about that, i suppose he may have measured them before hand. Sort of like building a model ship. I wondered too about electrical changes over the wires. I broke a leg on an IC chip in an old micro and used a sewing needle in place of the leg.
@@JB52520 Thanks, the machines clock was 2Mhz, interesting to know those tolerances can survive a bodge, only being a hobby coder i would not have easily thought that the clock speed was the important factor in the wiring capacitance.
I was having an argument with my mates the other day about how big a homemade computer would be, they argued it would be as big as a city i argued it wouldn't be bigger than a table, thank you for making this video i can now prove my point to my mates
Actually your friends almost were right. He used a lot of already completed modules, but if he will make a computer fully from 0, it could be as large as an entire room.
So I've been looking forward to this update for a while now. But I think I speak for everyone when I ask when the production run on the custom GPU will finish? I was planning to buy something from AMD, but given how fast these videos are coming out I'm betting yours will be in stock first :P
i see why computers used to be so massive. even at a rudimentary level (comparatively speaking) it still seems to take up a good section of your table. absolutely insane work
damn we had to make a simple cpu in logisim and then verilog but i never tried to make it irl (it should be really expensive ) but yeah i would try a 32bit in everything because i have some premade maps for mips edit: i want to see you make your own transistors to make a simple chipset
Having used Logisim to design a even more basic computer, and knowing how hard that is, I can only imagine the complexity in bringing that into real hardware. Well done. Is this pointless or a waste of time? No. Even as a software dev, it gives a real insight into how software layers really work.
And there I was, back in grade one who for my science project (we were doing light), wanted to build a video gaming system. I bet I could have accomished this. I acquired a good stack of various wires from old refrigerators, and thought some pieces out of an oven and a microwave could be combined to build a ps1 quality device
@@vladyslavkryvoruchko I was six years old, and overly ambitious for someone who didn't understand what they were doing. Lol that project was what got me interested in building computers tho. Plus the joke is just that, I acquired a stack of wires, some pieces from a fridge, and a broken microwave to build a ps1, all while being 6
I don't think building your own alu was a bad decision. When you are building cpu you decide how much do you want to simplify or not the whole elements. You could build your own registers, but you use chips - maybe that's a bad example, but something like alu is quite complex so I think it's good that you did it on your own
Great video, I thought about doing something similar for a German audience, which really goes through all the details from ground up. But frankly the effort is too much for me right now. Respect, that you did that.
It's amazing that this computer is handmade. I want to make a computer like you. But I don't think I can make it because the process of making it seems too difficult. I can't imagine how hard it would be to build the computer we use. I am glad that this challenge was successful 10120
jdh 2022: Recreating electrons by hand! jdh 2023: Creating a whole new multiverse by hand jdh 2024: I created the time for my new multiverse jdh 2025: I teared the fabric of the space time just for a youtube video
i just wanna come here and say that the thumbnail triggered an almost traumatizing memory of my project last semester that used so many jumper cables (not as many as this, granted) that failed, that jumper cables being one of the reasons it was hard to troubleshoot
You are an absolute genius. I understood maybe 0.01% of what you were talking about. This is the kind of thing that makes me believe that computer designers/programmers are the equivalent of modern wizards doing magic that the rest of us can't understand or even begin to grasp.
PC builders when they realize their cpu is pre-built
Lol
the breadboard and integrated chips are pre built.
sorry
@@MaxCE dont tempt him
@@sequencental3240 next video: Building a computer from scratch using nothing but transistors and wires
@MaxCE cut down a tree and make bread boards from the wood
4. The ALU could have been replaced by a single chip
My guy, the entire computer can be replaced by a single chip. I think, implementing the ALU yourself is a big part of the achievement and fun.
That was my thought!
But were is the fun in that?
@@brostenen In implementing everything yourself? Well if you didn't find that fun, you wouldn't build a bread board computer in the first place! One of the main components of a basic pc is the alu. It just makes sense to build it yourself imo.
@@barmetler Exactly as I say. Integrating chips in one chip, removes the fun.
@@barmetler But you can do all of that... the ALU, registers, hardware AND microcode instruction decode... all of it in an FPGA. All of your learning and accomplishments will be just as valid, except for the "joys" of physical breadboarding.
I did wirewrapped prototype computer boards back in the Bad Old Days and I'd rather not do it again. Praise be to today's Asian PCB houses and to programmable logic ICs.
There are only two more ways I see to go lower-level: Using pure transistors and then making transistors.
A colab with that dude making in house ics would be cool
First we should use premade transistors then we'll see about making transistors from sand 😂
dont give him any ideas
I feel like going from TTL logic chips to transistors themselves, isn't too big a leap; on the other hand, you need a whole industrial setup to make transistors.
Damn. I was about to say that. I really, really want to see him take this as far as physically possible... Although he should really do them on a small scale, like a video about making a logic gate as proof of concept and a video about making a transistor
The complexity of this project really puts how unbelievably amazing everyday computers are in to perspective.
Now let's talk about the PCI interface and networking...
And to think the brain of the computer is made of sand
Watch him heat large amounts of quartz sand to produce his own silicon.
Watch him doing the studies to create a new universe
Silicon, No O
no no no you need to use trichlorosilane to deposit thin layers of pure silicon onto some matirel
Sounds like a good excuse to collab with someone like NileRed or Cody'sLab!
silicone is the rubbery
material breast implants are made from. Silicon is a chemical element that integrated circuits are built upon using chemical baths, lithography, and etching.
I remember my brother built a binary/octal/decimal/hexadecimal converting computer using ic’s hand wrapped on perf board when he was an 8th grader because he got into an argument with his math teacher over letters being numbers (hex) and not just as a variable. It took him a week to design, and 2-months to build, he took 2nd place at the regional science fair (losing to a bubble memory demo the kid’s dad brought in from his work) My brother used switches to cycle through the modes and lamps to show the converted binary and red digital displays for the hex numbers. There was a keypad to enter the base 10 number to convert. The 80’s were a great time to be a kid. I thought it was cool.
haha what an achievement "yeah I came second at the regional science fair because i made a computer that was only 20 years behind its time all from scratch without any prebuilt items to prove some year 8 maths to my maths teacher"
@@bimbirobotics1050 mald, cope, seethe, cry more
Reminds me of Doofenshmirtz losing at the science fair to a baking soda vinegar volcano
Your brother is dunning kruger
@@robowaifutechnician He built an ic in the 80s and he is Dunning Kruger?
I'm impressed you can keep track of anything through that jungle of wires. And that you managed to connect everything without wires jumping out and loose connections and everything.
But honestly, I'm impressed you made this work. Good job.
| without wires jumping out and loose connections and everything
no, no, there were plenty of those. more hours spent finding them than I want to count 🥲
@@jdh So for your next project you'll go with wire wrapping, right? :)
@@jdh Good for u to stick with it then! This final result is INSANE.
Would make a great video if his mom changed 2 wires...so we can watch him find out which 2 they are in a 8 hour video 🤣
@@tiqo8549 you magnificent sadist. 😂
We built breadboard computers like this in high school (mid-80's). We were put into groups of 3-4 people, given the schematic, BOM and told to go build it. The design used a 74181 as the brains.
We didn't have a display and all we had for output were LEDs and 7-segment displays. LCD? LOL. FWIW this was a few years before VGA was even a thing.
I don't think any group actually got the whole thing to work but some groups got some sub-systems to work.
Bet if he got to an interview and showed his projects, they would still say "that's cool, but can you reverse this binary tree?"
"No, but I can simulate your ass in my handmade Opengl rendering engine"
@@Nick-lx4fo you mean in his own graphics library running on a breadboard gpu?
Heavy breathing
@@amp08021 in a Minecraft clone made with his own game engine
Can you invert this binary tree?
I've coded threaded red-black binary trees from scratch.
But can you invert this binary tree?
I designed your CPU and graphics card.
So you can't invert this binary tree?
Yes, I can invert this binary tree.
PROVE IT, BUCKO!
Okay, which language?
You choose.
Siri.
Ok, go ahead.
"Computer? Hello, computer? Invert this binary tree."
You are practicing a lost art, my man! Sure, it's a relatively simple computer, but I imagine a day when, given enough knowledge, one might have enough components available to build a more complex system. Perhaps not quite to the degree of what we have nowadays, in mainstream computing, but certainly something more complex. Great job! You've earned a subscriber.
Man went from having programmers as main audience to having electrical engineers as main audience
More like computer engineers
@@martiananomaly both
This is making me become a computer engineer on accident
@@martiananomaly apparently computer engineers completely skip analog electronics....
which is a shame because that's where the pain is.
@@cpK054L thats not true at all... most of my undergrad in comp e has been more analog than digital
I started something similar a few years ago. I only used ICs when I'd already built the equivalent with transistors - so an IC with 8 AND gates could only be used once I'd built a few AND gates without ICs. Started from limited electronics knowledge and got as far as having a circuit producing the Fibonacci sequence with LEDs displaying memory content. So at that point I had basic memory handling and felt I understood everything I needed to do to get a working computer but gave up at the point of defining an instruction set. The initial aim was to achieve that level of understanding so I wasn't convinced I wanted to keep adding breadboards having achieved my aim. So your collected mass of breadboards brought back memories. I think this is a great thing to have a go at for anyone with enough interest; even if you don't take it all the way.
Congratulations! And special congratulations for your poor design decisions. Doing the wrong thing, and then realizing why it was wrong is the one of the most important elements of projects like this.
:O Hey, thanks! It really means a lot from you - the Magic-1 was a big inspiration for this project, I remember watching your videos on it a lot when I was younger and visiting your website and all.
The legend himself. @Bill, have you considered coming to any of the VCF this year? I know that you were planning to last year but I believe it was canceled.
@@Roanokekidstech I retired and moved to Oregon - so if there's ever another VCF (or similar) event) in the Portland/Seattle area, I'll be sure to attend with Magic-1.
Sure I laughed when reading this
but great feedback lol 😂
Yes
This is a staggering achievement; you should be proud. Never think it was a waste of your time. You can progress to better design and product manufacture. Great video.
Having literally just finished my computer architecture course at university yesterday, it was really nice being able to actually understand some of the things you're talking about in this video lol.
I was thinking about taking a computer architecture course. Do you think it is worth taking?
@@denvercox7675 Definitely. In my case, being a CS major, the class was required, but I would still recommend it even if its not. The final project, at least in my class, was to design a CPU. So you essentially learn how to do exactly what jdh does in this video, minus the real-life building of the computer and the external I/O things like the graphics card. It's really interesting to see how relatively simple computers are when you break them down to their most basic components: just a lot of logic gates.
@Denver Cox Aaaay am finishing one next week. I will say though that whether it's a good course or not will depend *entirely* on your professor and how they teach: mine is an absolute slog. Ask people who took the class at your uni.
@@denvercox7675 depends on your profs and most especially if you like digital electronics z take it only then
Same.
Congratz :D And on learning from the not so great design choices. I'd love to see you build a sound card on the breadboards next as in like the 8 bit sound chips, but in discrete logic/component form. Would prob be complicated, but I haven't seen anyone do it before.
This seems like one of those 2am video ideas where you completely ignore the difficulty and only focus on how awesome it would be to pull it off.
Absolutely insane man. Great job.
And here I am watching it by 01:22
Im watching it by 1:19 LOL
hey jdh ive been here since around 5-10k and you're a huge inspiration to me. thanks so much for posing, stay safe!
I've recommended this channel to friends as someone descending into madness. What started off as low level interest has now resulted in this, a whole ass computer done nearly all by hand.
you should take a look at ben eaters channel.
low-level is right. lol
it's really sad sometimes for me look at the number of comments and asking myself if i would ever get read, and afraid that my contribution is that minor will annoy more than help. But I'm happy telling you, SO THERE YOU WERE BUSY THAT ALL TIME MAN. Missed a lot your great contributions to the community, but you come back with the best of you. I truly love this hand-made with logic parts computer.
Thanks for the chill background music. It really helped because this video gave me anxiety.
Jdh is the REAL definition of full stack development
"I built my own computer"
"Oh, so you bought the individual parts off of amazon and put them together?"
"Haha yeah something like that"
If I were you, I would be too damn tempted to create a 3D software rasterizer on that thing.
Just imagine having your own self build computer and then run a 3D demo makes me stuff of my wet dreams.
But a god damn cool project that you did.
This comment is right below a "can it run crysis" joke for me, and it now has me wondering if it'd be possible to port Doom to this hardware... It's been ported to sillier things before.
@@SolarShado Some legend ported doom to my model of calculator that we use at school!
@@SolarShado my comment is almost not meant as a joke. Like visible on my channel I really enjoy graphics programming, so this is something that I would really enjoy doing. Especially programming with limited ressources is quite satisfying. So it would be really cool to see a Doom port but that's probably not feasible. But who knows?
@@EpicVideoGamer7771 do you have some link to more informations about this? It would be interesting to learn more about this.
@@EpicVideoGamer7771 now port the apollo rocket software
This looks exactly like every PC build I've done
In terms of wire management that is
Ben Eater be like: well-done comrade
Ben Dover: 😳
@@regularname1825 * finger guns *
Exactly
This one was BIGGER than Uncle Ben's.
nahh he don't even give credit to ben eater. most of his methods follow ben eater. especially on his graphics card vid
Nice work and excellent video. My CPU design has registers: IR, PC, Flags, A, B, M (RAM address), S (one-position "stack"), and index register called X, which is always added to M. Results of math always is placed on the stack. My 16 instructions are: ADD, AND, NOT, OR, SHR (shift right), SUB, XOR, LDA (load A immediate), PSHr, POPr, STA (stores A into M+X), RDM (reads M+X)., JC, JN, JV, JZ. Since any compare is just a subtract that sets the flags and doesn't alter the A register, I don't bother with a compare, I just use the SUB. Addresses are 12 bits. instructions are 16, which is 12-bits plus 4 for the opcode.
This is an incredibly impressive thing to see. You clearly put a lot of effort into this, and it's really exiting to see it finished.
gotta appreciate that enbie mention, even though there's like 5 enbies and im not even one of them it's very wholesome
Finally we have the jdh-8
Can’t wait to see the jdh8-asm C compiler!
my man went from making sort of cool games to being a computer engineer
This was what my first from-scratch computer looked like; the 'mcDonalds arches'; after you've done a few you start trying to lay ther wires in a buss form, along the breadboards... but as a noob, it always becomes this big mess.
Problem I ran into, running at any real speed (Mhz+), was the arches seemed to have a capcitance issue against the breadboards, causing all kinds of issues slowing moving around the boards .. like a cloud of trouble :)
Using a metal cookie tray underneath seemed to help somehow at the time, but just making PCBs (way easier than I thought at first), with lots of ground plane etc, worked amazingly well.
Amazing job, and love the videos!
Also .. what do you do with it now?
Convert the schematic to a PCB and populate that, and then you can have it for life; I found with all these giant stacks of breadboards (glued, to actual bread cutting boards, muahuahua), is just a nightmare, and after a couple weeks there'll be all kinds of wires loose or dust in the way or something,a nd it all goes to crap :/ All those arches of wires are hard to store!
Can’t believe you used pre-made integrated circuits instead of individual transistors smh
In all seriousness this is amazing
Resistor-Transistor logic at that.
I hoped for tubes. 😀
“Boys, girls *and* enby’s” 💚💚🥺 my new favorite you tuber
Dude, this is the most impressive thing i have seen on youtube in quite a while. Thank you for this
Very impressive endeavor. And the only way to tryly understand and appreciate progress in computing.
Wow. You have my respect. I have a similar project.... I'm close to finishing my all transistor and diode based digital clock. And believe me, everything is fun until you have to deal with analog problems in digital circuitry^^.
First of all amazing work. Similar project was part of our Computer Architecture curriculum, We had to do it in groups of three, within 48 allocated lab hours, over span of two months, the trick is to use single solid core cables, cut them up to desired length and lay them out on breadboard like PCBs. My finger tips just got sore, thinking about all the wire bending i had to do.
Now move the computer to a PCB so it doesn't start failing when you accidentally touch one of the cables :)
2:14 Ahh yes my favourite OS, Macdows XP
That thing is cool! I can't imagine how many hours you spent on working on that just to make it out put hi on the screen. That must have taken a long time, and probably a lot of debugging to say the least. Really cool that it works and man it looks pretty complex dispite its simple instruction set. I will be checking out the hour long video as well because I'm interested in how this works in more detail then whats shown here. Awesome job on the content and I really enjoy your videos! Honestly it inspires me to do some cool programming and CS videos on my channel. Thanks for the content!
You should try and get through Airport Security with it, I think they'll really appreciate how much work went into it!
it's too big to fit lol
I'm so happy because I was awaiting for this video for so long
Just recently following Ben Eaters 6502 computer build using the said chip, and a couple outher ROM/RAM chips and video controller. This is absolutely the next level. LOVE IT. I just recently purchased 'Turing Logic' from steam, and it is following this very process: build the computer using transistor based logic gates, program in binary, create an assmbler language, write a bare metal 'OS'/game.
At 11 minutes when you were going over your regrets about not just using an already built ALU chip it sparked a thought that since you built the ALU from scratch, why not just keep breaking it down until you're building everything from scratch, including your own logic gates. Next video will probably be you gathering sand on the beach then melting it down yourself and forming the silicon into your own chips lmao
He'll need to get in some copper mining too, and mix up some polymers to coat the wires. ;) You laugh, but my money is on this guy for president of the NCR after the US and China blow up the world.
Gathering send and making semiconductor components is totally unnecessary. One can build any digital logic using only NOR or NAND gates. So all he needs is to build these from tubes and resistors. There are channels on YT of ppl building "computers" only with vacuum tubes and resistors.
@@mikicerise6250 You don't need fancy modern synthetic polymers to insulate wires, some old wires use paper as insulation, some use varnishes.
@@inv41id even recycling them from old tech is a great idea.
@@perakojot6524 that would probably be too big of a project, literally
Wow. This is amazing man. Great job on this!
The Elements of Computing is one heck of a beast!!!
But it goes one step farther than jdh has, so far - building a high-level language compiler for it. Maybe if jdh doesn't go there, then I, an electrical engineer, might.
So glad I found this channel
Your like the extractions and ire of electrical engineering
Now you need to make the Mouse, Keyboard, and Monitor.
Holy shit bro! That is DEDICATION! Wow, excellent work 👏🏻
I love Ben Eater's breadboarding style but your wires feel so much more natural, and like the mess of my own breadboards
Ah yes, natural wires like they grow in the wild.
Id say it is a nice project and it seems you had a lot of fun.
Now you can slowly improve it untill reaches 1990 level.
99% dont know how to build a computer from scratch ,but you now know.
This deserves more views for all your hard work. You should try asking LTT or a similar channel to show it in their video
100% yes
Make it display the Daily Dose of Internet's logo and he'll feature it in a short clip with a link to source.
I felt like a massive nerd when I overclocked my PC by my own on trial and error... God I realise now that I greatly understsmated the meaning of nerd
i love this guy, he makes me stare at my code in c++ 20, and feel the need to rewrite it in birth c
Back in the day, I was a (to the component) technician on the AN/UYK-7 computers. The most sophisticated IC in the CPU(s) was a quad d-latch. Sub clocking was done by analog delay line.
I've always had a thought of doing a project like yours. Thanks for convincing me to skip that project.
Congrats, I hope someone will (regardless of how terrible the design is) turn this into a compact PCB. Great way to start of your merch store ..?
I guess if he wanted, he could sell a parts kit online, it would be relatively simple to design the PCB using free software.
Much respect!
hey! i very very much like to see all your projects and have followed all of your videos with great attention because theyre just great!
however, i'd hate to see your minecraft project die, i think its one of the coolest coding projects on youtube, and i would love to see some actual gameplay, wouldnt it also be great if more and more people helped and joined in with the code writing, and having an awesome minecraft remake entierly made in C? in my opinion, its way too awesome not to finish it!
When the webcam turned on I was surprised, I didn't think nerdy smart people could be also so beautiful!
This project is awesome except the wires which looks like a mess, but my fav video is still the one where you created the CPU instructions for no reason 🤣
Him and GreatScott (an electronics UA-camr), who’s also really handsome…
@@tookitogo aesthetic aside, my fav is still the 8bit guy, he's awesome. And also check Ben Eater channel!
@@Link-channel I know both channels!
I have very mixed feelings about 8-bit guy, since he’s not as knowledgeable as he’d like people to think, and doesn’t react well to being called out for doing dumb stuff. Just feels to me like he prefers to rush out a video than to do research to properly honor the gems he often has in his hands, and he doesn’t treat rare things with the care they deserve.
JD8CH, missed oppurtunity
Me learning the theory of this in COA class this semester and seeing this. Got me excited.
Well. He did it
This dude deserves at least 2M views for that much effort
i'm surprised you didn't have any problems with the length an variability of the wires, felt like that could mess something up
I had not thought about that, i suppose he may have measured them before hand. Sort of like building a model ship. I wondered too about electrical changes over the wires. I broke a leg on an IC chip in an old micro and used a sewing needle in place of the leg.
Wire length and capacitance shouldn't be a problem if the clock runs slow enough. As long as the bits have enough time to stabilize, it's all good.
@@JB52520 Thanks, the machines clock was 2Mhz, interesting to know those tolerances can survive a bodge, only being a hobby coder i would not have easily thought that the clock speed was the important factor in the wiring capacitance.
@@m.p.jallan2172 2 Mhz is years in the eyes of electrons
Cable management go BOOM!
I was having an argument with my mates the other day about how big a homemade computer would be, they argued it would be as big as a city i argued it wouldn't be bigger than a table, thank you for making this video i can now prove my point to my mates
Actually your friends almost were right. He used a lot of already completed modules, but if he will make a computer fully from 0, it could be as large as an entire room.
Really cool! I wish I had been following the vids as you were making it
So I've been looking forward to this update for a while now. But I think I speak for everyone when I ask when the production run on the custom GPU will finish? I was planning to buy something from AMD, but given how fast these videos are coming out I'm betting yours will be in stock first :P
Now you gotta make it from discreet transistors!
Next video, "I created my own technology with its own rules"
i see why computers used to be so massive. even at a rudimentary level (comparatively speaking) it still seems to take up a good section of your table. absolutely insane work
Please make a programming language for this computer then make a game with it.
Reminds me of the Apple I Computer and the DIY Version of Apple II.
Jdh is such a underrated content creator.
Theres alot of blue red and yellow,
It's name should be the Superman
damn we had to make a simple cpu in logisim and then verilog but i never tried to make it irl (it should be really expensive ) but yeah i would try a 32bit in everything because i have some premade maps for mips
edit: i want to see you make your own transistors to make a simple chipset
This was a great video, it defintely inspired me to start a big project of my own.
Having used Logisim to design a even more basic computer, and knowing how hard that is, I can only imagine the complexity in bringing that into real hardware. Well done. Is this pointless or a waste of time? No. Even as a software dev, it gives a real insight into how software layers really work.
You would have learnt so godamn much from this project
Me, knowing nothing about computers, smiling and nodding along, wondering why UA-cam put this in my recommended:
But can it run Doom?
that was awesome bro. i wish i had the time and liberty to try things like this.
Unbelievable that noone has made a "but can it run crysis" joke yet
And there I was, back in grade one who for my science project (we were doing light), wanted to build a video gaming system. I bet I could have accomished this. I acquired a good stack of various wires from old refrigerators, and thought some pieces out of an oven and a microwave could be combined to build a ps1 quality device
A good stack of wires and components wouldnt help you very much. You need some knowledge about how computers work at least.
@@vladyslavkryvoruchko I was six years old, and overly ambitious for someone who didn't understand what they were doing. Lol that project was what got me interested in building computers tho. Plus the joke is just that, I acquired a stack of wires, some pieces from a fridge, and a broken microwave to build a ps1, all while being 6
Why aren't you verified bro
that's a good point thanks for the reminder i just asked UA-cam and i'm verified now
@@jdh Congrats
I don't think building your own alu was a bad decision. When you are building cpu you decide how much do you want to simplify or not the whole elements. You could build your own registers, but you use chips - maybe that's a bad example, but something like alu is quite complex so I think it's good that you did it on your own
so.. you have your own OS.. your own computer.. but all that code you used is still made in languages made by someone else ^^;
Great video, I thought about doing something similar for a German audience, which really goes through all the details from ground up.
But frankly the effort is too much for me right now.
Respect, that you did that.
It's amazing that this computer is handmade. I want to make a computer like you. But I don't think I can make it because the process of making it seems too difficult. I can't imagine how hard it would be to build the computer we use. I am glad that this challenge was successful 10120
jdh 2022: Recreating electrons by hand!
jdh 2023: Creating a whole new multiverse by hand
jdh 2024: I created the time for my new multiverse
jdh 2025: I teared the fabric of the space time just for a youtube video
i just wanna come here and say that the thumbnail triggered an almost traumatizing memory of my project last semester that used so many jumper cables (not as many as this, granted) that failed, that jumper cables being one of the reasons it was hard to troubleshoot
You mad man. Get the Knipex one handed wire strippers!
This makes me want to do a video on the calculator I built.
Idk why .....but I love seeing Breadboards and lot of Jumper Wires connecting different components....
11:22 sounds like it's time to build a JDH-9
I'm amazed how you managed to build this despite of the crazy wiring lol
Such a good intro
And great video
Good luck 🤞
a hot computer engineer feels like it should be illegal
You are an absolute genius. I understood maybe 0.01% of what you were talking about. This is the kind of thing that makes me believe that computer designers/programmers are the equivalent of modern wizards doing magic that the rest of us can't understand or even begin to grasp.