The Gigatron TTL Computer without a Microprocessor

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Read the description of "My Dream Computer" here:
www.the8bitguy.com/2576/what-i...
Gigatron site: gigatron.io/
New features upgrade follow-up video: • The Gigatron Computer ...

[@HudsonGTV]

5:00 lets just appreciate the fact that they printed "Blinkenlights" on the PCB.

[@TheJanDahl]

telnet blinkenlights.nl 666

[@anthonyvaldes6070]

I know that from both Windows 93 and a tutorial

[@TheJanDahl]

​@@anthonyvaldes6070 If you've IPv6 enabled now, it has a new surprise for you :-) Also, I misremembered, it's `telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl` :-)

[@rosiefay7283]

@@anthonyvaldes6070 Wikipedia's article gives an example from 1955.

[@SchwachsinnProduzent]

@Kiwi Official It's not. Flashing lights would be "blinkende Lichter"

[@subliminalcastillo2126]

That intro music is so kickass it makes me wanna throw a tanktop, shorts, headband & sweatbands on and jog to the grocery store

[@harambezomb8373]

Underrated comment

[@GameHerbert]

That's so dumb, I love it

[@schwarzenegger_begger8810]

I'd jog to the outro music

[@gosth81]

Jajajajajaja

[@Godfather_of_the_Oath]

Just do it! And don't forget the neon colors

[@ke6gwf]

I love the 8-bit cat designed in monochrome to save system memory!

[@nwobhm1992]

Hahaha

[@nwobhm1992]

It is a 2-bit cat

[@BertGrink]

@@nwobhm1992 1-bit, actually; 1 bit per pixel is enough for a black and white display without a greyscale

[@nwobhm1992]

@@BertGrink yes, lol i made mistake

[@hatsunemikuchannel2023]

This Video Is So Awesome, Well Done!! 😃😄😃😄😍🥰😍🥰🤗🤗

[@johns7734]

My first computer was a Vim with a 6502. I had to assemble my code by hand. Counting the displacement for relative branches was always challenging. It makes you appreciate what an assembler and linker does for you.

[@timecubed]

vim...

[@theastrogamer710]

Now make a computer with vacuum tubes instead of transistors. Im sure that if you filled out the entire state of Texas with them that you could probably run Tetris.

[@tjja7321]

lel :)

[@southjerseysound7340]

I had a customer that has done it and it was insane.He powered it from his 240 volt line in his house because of the power it took to run.It has massive hound wound transformers and runs a grid voltage of 600 VOLTS.I dont know what he spent but it wasnt the cheapest way to go thats for sure.But man is the thing bad ass once warmed up and it even uses period correct neon bulbs and nixie tubes.

[@s.s.85]

Holy hell, we need a video of that monster machine. Just description alone is tech porn.

[@southjerseysound7340]

I've got some pictures somewhere but I was in aw of it.The whole thing was about 3-3.5ft deep,4-4.5 ft wide and about the same in height,it was huge although he said it was small by historical standards.It was all point to point construction too.How they wired it is beyond me.Although the son was a engineer in his 50's and his father worked as a engineer at RCA and then in Bell Labs back in their prime. At the time he was telling me how his father helped invent transistors as we know them and to be honest i thought he was full of it.But I later found out he was in fact a tech who worked under Shockley when they invented the first transistor.I really wish I had got to meet the father but he died of cancer right after they finished the computer as a father/son project.I'll see if i can find the pics because the place was like a electronics museum .

[@dannygjk]

lol it wouldn't need to be that big Tetris is a relatively small program. :)

[@JGreen-le8xx]

I don't care what anyone says, he does an awesomely clean soldering job. 👍

[@witeshade]

J. Green it looks like his soldering skills have improved tremendously in recent months. It looked super slick this time.

[@BlackDuke235]

Agreed. Such an improvement from when he made the PE6502 Hobby Computer. Practice makes perfect.

[@Okurka.]

Are we sure those are his hands?

[@geraldhenrickson7472]

I agree. Very nice build. I be jealous.

[@BlackStarEOP]

that was the first thing I thought when I saw the circuit board soldering. great job, I wish I was that good :D

[@tony_iv_cz]

4:33 CAT: "Wait moment, I help you."

[@janosvago5096]

Very nice cat, i love cats

[@Demonanimator]

You’d get more likes if your grammer wasn’t shit.

[@andrewinnj]

@@Demonanimator No one likes you and you spelled grammar wrong.

[@andrewinnj]

@@Demonanimator g-r-a-m-m-a-r

[@HarryMudd]

I just love that cat

[@cuddlestsq2730]

The music during the assembly is so nice and relaxing. Love it.

[@FaxanaduJohn]

I love the montage music as you solder and snip!

[@Kylefassbinderful]

I was gonna say the same thing. Very soothing.

[@TheMrzucker21]

Its like rocky training montage with chips instead!

[@mattj65816]

The music he uses is almost always outstanding, considering the subject matter. His theme music is perfect.

[@Kylefassbinderful]

I'm guessing it's more Anders Enger Jensen

[@DeepSEADetroit]

It just makes me feel at home... So 80s! I'd love to know who's music it is!

[@atzefatze]

....4:32 inspector cat controls your work! Really a fluffy cute cat! :D

[@Gamer1st1]

I used to work with boards like this in arcade machines and 80s-90s pinball machines frequently. Gorf, Missile Command, Asteroids, etc. It made repair easy once you found the problem. Finding the problem could be a problem however. Best deal I ever got was a “dead” Pinbot pinball machine. Had to replace 2 dead transistors I got off another dead board. Got the machine for $200 and cost nothing to repair. Knowledge is power.

[@matthewJ142]

So it's a macroprocessor computer?

[@Jesse__H]

the music was a high point of this one, for me. I've always loved your intro theme, but the backing tracks did a lot for the experience, this time, too!

[@dreammfyre]

That assembly music is 10/10. 👌

[@AndersEngerJensen]

re hash 👍🏼Thanks, you’ll find the full version here and on Bandcamp: soundcloud.com/eox-studios/tlg-seikos-theme Complete album later this year along with the game itself hopefully. 😎🎷🎹

[@vwestlife]

Is that a Yamaha DX-7 we're hearing?

[@GamenRyder]

Really awesome.

[@AndersEngerJensen]

VWestlife Not actually, but a lot of older and newer FM based sounds: Yamaha TX-81z, XS-7, MotifRack, bunch of Roland synths/modules and ReFX Nexus2 with the FM expansions. :)

[@hardrays]

spot on with the kinda medley of yacht rock hooks. covers mid 70s through early 90's right there. bam.

[@jasonbaumgartner3218]

The performance is actually pretty remarkable considering it is only using TTL logic chips.

[@factorylad5071]

Yep they would have used ECL in the day.

[@MrBobbytheruler]

Hi David! I just wanted to say thank you for your channel and the dedication you show to it! I wanted to study CS in college, but after my first year, I was dismayed by how BORING and aloof the department at my school is (and I go to an ivy...). I have learned more in 3 weeks since discovering your channel than I have in 6 months of CS. Keep up the inspiring work!!!

[@customsongmaker]

Update on your career?

[@johnwang9914]

When I was an engineering student, one of the courses involved designing a computer out of what were called bit slicers, basically a computer without a cpu on a chip but rather building a cpu or rather an alu out of multiple chips. Also, it was and still is common in digital electronics courses to build state machines, the early Pioneer and Mariner space probes used state machines instead of computers. In essence, you could make a state machine to perform all the functions of a computer, it's even technically correct to call a computer a state machine. State machines can be made from mere transistors, op-amps, discrete TTL logic gates, from counters or even from eproms. Today people take megabytes and multiple dynamically loaded libraries to write programs that we use to write in just a hundred bytes without a library, we use to call making your own personal library making your own computer language. People just can't do anything without a ton of stuff being done by someone else which they don't even know if they need them.

[@reyariass]

John Wang I do admire all the work that was done to make my life easier, I’m very grateful for the people who spent pain staking hours working on today’s libraries. I have attempted to learn but 99% of it goes over my head. 😔

[@QqJcrsStbt]

Challenge yourself with a one bit Texas controller, not a bit slice even. IIRC 4 bit instruction set and a one bit output data bus. A MAXQ TTA OISA from Dallas/Maxim is also a mental challenge. Instruction set; MOVE f ddd ddd ssss ssss.

[@factorylad5071]

John Wang. Hmmpf interesting name , do you have any connectiion with Wang Computers? If its not a state machine it must be either A Von Neuman machine Or A Moore Mealy machine Correct?

[@gregorymalchuk272]

@@QqJcrsStbt What is the part number of the Texas single bit processor?

[@mattlast4093]

is it just me, or is there something inherently satisfying about watching a pin being soldered in ?

[@erintyres3609]

Yes, when you correctly solder something for the first time, it is wonderful to see how the solder flows into the joint. One of the younger members of the ham radio club liked it very much too.

[@thefirstsin]

I get so stressed when my projects doesn't get soldered properly.

[@triviamandave]

@Fatih Kan I have faith in you! Clean the tip of the iron, add a little bit of solder to the iron, FIRMLY place the iron on the pin and the trace, wait a couple of seconds, add the solder the pin and the trace (not the iron), let it flow for a couple of seconds, remove iron.

[@synthmark7687]

I thought that too until my old iron from the USSR decided to start melting

[@fluffycommander]

I love how you take the time to show what you do to solder and clip things in. I have no idea how any of this works so this is really good.

[@347573]

I agree with some comments done: the number of pieces seems high, but considering that these are just BASE circuits in reality is really wonderful how many little pieces they are using!!! And since the step to transistor is little I also think it would be wonderful to see one done with them!

[@5argetech56]

That first image was a mandrill. And that's a pretty famous image from back in the day to display color capability.

[@xXTheoLinuxXx]

True, just like the parrot picture. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_16-bit_computer_hardware_palettes

[@brendanfarthing]

I was thinking the same. As soon as I saw those images they were familiar to me from the 80's for showing off colour capabilities of computers. And I recall my mind being blown at those graphics at the time! :)

[@gk...]

Who is Lena?

[@gk...]

oh thx, never heard from

[@Dukefazon]

That Monster 6502 looks really sweet!

[@driftliketokyo34ftw35]

Why do I have the urge to get some bread board and some electronics and experiment to my heart’s content.

[@connect2reality]

"I hope that somebody builds my dream computer" And that somebody turned out to be future 8-Bit Guy

[@crusaderanimation6967]

This is one of the "Fine i will do it myself" moments.

[@andyhu9542]

@@crusaderanimation6967 Absolutely correct...

[@QuantumScratcher]

So in 50 years from now the 512-Bit Guy will create my dream computer?

[@andyhu9542]

@@QuantumScratcher Actually not... The bit increase is driven by the need for memory. And by doubling the bits (which is an exponential increase!) the memory capacity is squared which is kind of 'exponential of exponential'. We haven't used full 64 bits in our 64-bit processors for addressing yet (just 40 of them, considering increasing one bit will double the supported memory, there is still a LONG way to go!). I'm not placing my bet on 128-bit computers becoming mainstream anytime soon, not to say 512-bits.

[@markdeguzman6556]

Who knows? Maybe Ben Eater will?

[@thereallantesh]

I'm guessing the point of purchasing this would be simply for the enjoyment of building it.

[@Pijawek]

Hreat conversation piece as well.

[@pwnmeisterage]

I'm more interested in that "Monster 6502" board at 1:12 ... C64s and Z80s and PCs just ain't the same magic as my old 8-bit Apple II+ (clone)

[@dushk0]

@@Pijawek yes, to get chicks! It is easier to hatch some eggs, though.

[@geckoo9190]

Nee I think that it would be to build those logic doors by hand, I have't check the schematics but I guess that you have to build up the processor on the bus.

[@Gamer1st1]

It’s a kit build like a model or Lego. No real purpose at this point other than for a hobby.

[@Dukefazon]

It’s so relaxing to watch you assemble stuff.

[@WrinkleRelease]

One of the reasons I enjoy your channel so much is how approachable you make all the items you discuss. You take great care to show detail in assembly or cleaning; you always give a tip for the beginner during the project and never come off as haughty; you clearly put a lot of effort into editing B-roll and close-ups.

[@iurysilva1145]

This assembly it's soo relaxing, I love this king of video, congrats.

[@kristoferkristensen9021]

That opening piece of music is, in a word, perfect.

[@DanielBartholomew]

I think I just found a High School graduation present for my daughter. She's planning on studying EE in college and this would be a step up from the mostly simple electronics kits she's assembled and played with so far.

[@Seff2]

Daniel Bartholomew I would rather recommend you to have a look at the Ben eater computer here on KZbin. It's a phenomenal instruction Series on how to build a very basic computer. After you done this, you pretty much know how a computer really works. The drawback is, that you have to get the individual parts yourself, since there is no kit or so available. Also some parts are hard to find, and finally you can expect to also pay at least 150€ in parts. However, I am glad I did the journey.

[@mydadneverlovedme8567]

When I graduated high school my dad died a year before from his fast paced lifestyle of booze, amphetamines, and liver damage. He got me unpaid child support payments.

[@Zonkotron]

EE postgraduate student here......don't :-/ . This isn't EE. It's just soldering together "stuff". Raspberri pi + arduino on the other hand....perhaps throw in an Analog Discovery by Diglent....that's stuff even a graduate Engineer will use all the time to test some stuff etc. Apparently they make interesting STM 32 boards now, much like arduino but tons more powerful. So many things out there which are just as fun, but so much more poweful and useful for years to come. Perhaps it's just me, but the more EE i learn, the less i care about stuff like this. It's cute, sure. But...mehhh....has no edge.

[@Zenas521]

If home-brew hobby computer is what you want then the system Clickety Clack or Paul Law have built is much more interesting. Don't expect to play Crysis, but don't expect to be bored ether. They are objects of beauty.

[@vinesthemonkey]

Why not get an FPGA instead of a long soldering experiment? Significantly cheaper too.

[@SO_DIGITAL]

4:32 Kitty! So cute. I love the idea behind this computer. Very cool indeed. I bought a Sinclair Z80 replica kit that I want to assemble first.

[@chrisrose3589]

I love your videos. I stumbled upon your channel looking for good info on CPU technology, can't stop watching. I kick myself for giving up all the Commodore stuff I use to have!

[@nokyan]

I don't know why, but the left page at 1:49 looks like it was just loading when the piece of paper there fell down

[@TravisTev]

Haha, I thought the same thing when I caught it out of the corner of my eye. Had to go back to see what really happened. :-D

[@pomocxd8233]

yeah

[@nithpro1385]

same dude

[@p1nkfreud]

Yeah I was just about to post a comment on that myself. I actually exported the video into premier and looked at it up really close. It defies any explanation of mine.

[@elhadifettah7993]

The menu comes with microprocessor.

[@hellterminator]

A little tip for anyone soldering ICs: First solder every other pin and then come back and solder the rest. Old ICs are extremely sensitive to heat (and modern ICs aren't indestructible either) and this helps spread the heat, limiting the chance of damaging the chip.

[@101picofarad]

This pcb make for hand soldering - pins warm wery fast - no need to owerheat iron.

[@coriscotupi]

Or just solder IC sockets instead. Then insert the ICs into the previously-soldered sockets.

[@Milamberinx]

@@coriscotupi, I was wondering if anyone else noticed that. I'd never seen someone shoving their ICs into sockets prior to soldering.

[@coriscotupi]

​@@Milamberinx I guess in higher-frequency applications it might be interesting to have all components as close as possible to the circuit board ground plane, and also avoid the longer leads of the added sockets, but at 6MHz it would probably not matter. If I had bought the kit I'd have added sockets for the ICs.

[@GrahamNye]

First solder a diagonally opposite corner pair of leads to fix the package. You can see this has been done in the video, though it's not mentioned in the commentary. Then you can go round soldering alternate leads as suggested by hellterminator.

[@twistedyogert]

4:34 Inspection cat inspects your work.

[@franprarod]

The "Catlity" Assurance team just have arrived!

[@hatsunemikuchannel2023]

This Video Is So Awesome, Well Done!! 😃😄😃😄😍🥰😍🥰🤗🤗

[@authorlilhyz7121]

His cat is old until 2007

[@nickpavloff8977]

Wish I would’ve talked to my grandpa more about computers. He helped build the first one

[@CNCmachiningisfun]

It was lucky that you were able to get it Cat Scanned so early in the assembly process ;) .

[@VoidVerification]

"The first game is Snake. I haven't really figured out the point of the game." [Nokia nerd gasps resound throughout the internets]

[@OtakuUnitedStudio]

Christian Pasche it's different than the Nokia version: all the food is one the screen at once, the eaten food gets left behind as a trap, and he can't see the difference between green and orange because he's colorblind.

[@sn1000k]

Always fascinated with these 'computer on a board' proto-type thangs. Thanks for presenting this!

[@moozoo2589]

I've built this way ZX Spectrum 48K clone back in 1996 (produced by a local factory in exUSSR). Bought all bits and pieces on the open-air market. It was a lot of fun.

[@afloyd4976]

They needed to include a programming machine language monitor option just so people can try writing something for it.

[@lwilton]

I guess it depends on where you want to start. When I was building loose chips processors like that in the 1970s the first thing to do was make a cross-assembler on some other machine, then write the loader-debugger and push it down (somehow) to the target. At that point you could build a native assembler with the debugger, but again it is better to cross-compile that, it saves your sanity. Then you are set to go on the machine itself if you have IO working.

[@chaos.corner]

That all takes up extra ROM. Which is admittedly quite cheap these days. Perhaps have a "dual boot" mode.

[@siliconstate]

Love the tense music on initial power up

[@briansmith8967]

6:30 That's a Mandrill - the most iconic image ever in computer graphics

[@Dorff_Meister]

Was just coming to verify this was reported. I remember it well on the Amiga in the demos? Or a sample in Deluxe Paint? I remember being amazed the first time I saw it and the other associated images on the Amiga.

[@receptionsystem]

learning about how transistors and stuff like that work in my electronics class was so much fun and i cant wait to do more this year

[@BlickWinkel]

I like the Blinkenlights label.

[@SierraSierraFoxtrot]

The pseudo scan line display makes my heart melt...

[@markbloxam]

it's just so satisfying to watch the assembly soldering process..

[@Diomont]

You are the Bob Ross of computers.. i don't know anything about most of the things you are talking about, but you seem to make it so easy to understand. I just love it. It's relaxing. You have a smooth voice, always with a hint of humor and joy accompanying you making me really interested in reliving my old ms-dos/c64 days.. Thanks to you a lot!

[@FatalTaco]

5:00 damn the Blinkenlights joke lives on

[@KungKras]

the blinkenlights joke?

[@123IOWNALL321]

@@KungKras telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

[@peter_pinguin]

@@vek7933 actually it's a term for diagnostic lights on old mainframes. it originated from a german/english mockup language joke dating back to IBM in the 50s.

[@anthonyvaldes6070]

ᵇˡᶦⁿᵏᵉⁿˡᶦᵍʰᵗˢ

[@martindejong3974]

The pictures shown in the picture view application are all famous computer pictures, for example the parrot is used in wikipedia's article about color palettes en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_color_palettes

[@robertmorin6495]

When in school, (1980) we were taught that TTL logic switching was very fast. I often wondered if anyone ever attempted to bulid a working computer out of only TTL chips...This a a good example and I didn't know these kits were available. Nice little project there, congratulations on completing it successfully.

[@williamogilvie6909]

In the 1960s into the 1970s, China made computers using just NOR Gates. That was the only TTL IC they made for awhile.

[@aaronfeng894]

This video really brings back a lot of memories, I remember I used to working on these things in college.

[@GretgorPooper]

There's something utterly satisfying about watching you assemble a computer. Let's work on a compiler for mainstream languages to the Gigatron machine language!

[@Sniegras]

no ;)

[@serious.business]

Nah

[@charliekahn4205]

How about first we work on a better hardware addressing system so you don't have to use GCL

[@17659817265781465781]

Your intro music makes me HAPPY

[@MarcSola7]

It's all thanks to Anders Enger Jensen, here's the extended and slightly edited version of the intro music. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pJucpKx-fMmNY9U

[@Nethanel773]

Beautiful presentation! And kudos for your selection of 80s wait-muzak track. I trained at an electronics tech school in the early 90s. For the Digital phase, our lab was to build a 10-byte SRAM arithmetic logic unit. Just 10 LSI chips, a bank of 8 lever switches, 8 LEDs for the binary count, and single digital number display. Don't recall its clock speed, but it would heat up fast!

[@azifj]

Where can i get the music that used in this video? ❤

[@thebeststooge]

Reminds me of a modern day Heath Kit computer.

[@kalebmaxwell5725]

That 80's background music makes me feel like I am in a mall.

[@CanadianBakin42O]

Not sure if David looks at his comments on his older videos, but I really love his videos. He's really gives out good detailed information on this restoration videos on how all the nooks and crannies works. I've never grew up with old Tech like this, since being a 90s kid, but I do remember my old Windows 95 machine.

[@ronanderson1023]

I was jammin to the music the whole time, damn. Love your style

[@bibasik7]

6:01 Rubber feet as motherboard standoffs.

[@kevlarguardian]

Bibasik7 been trying to remove small hair from my screen for 15 minutes. Was your avatar 😁😁

[@maze42d]

I actualy have a hair under my screen protector 😂

[@user-pq3do4wt6c]

@@maze42d hell

[@mikewilliams6025]

Dude, you never played snake before? I'm confused how an 8-bit Guy such as yourself has missed the quintessential 8-bit game. That feels like an anomaly on such a large scale it would take the Gigatron seven and a half million years to process it.

[@mikewilliams6025]

Amberoot Audio what would you guess, like .42% percent of the time?

[@Koosemose]

It's mentioned in a reply to another comment, but this version had an extra feature, where the snake leaves behind differently colored droppings after eating (which to be honest I didn't notice the first time around), but due to his colorblindness they all looked the same to him, so from his point of view some of the dots would randomly kill him, making the functioning of the game unclear.

[@dannygjk]

A program snake game is small and simple.

[@iliapopovich]

0:42 about the "creator" S. Jobs I can say that this guy wasn't anything like an engineer, as Wosniak said once Jobs didn't even know that that aluminum is a conductive metal. Jobs was a good designer with very aggressive business behavior who also was famous for his bad attitude towards his employees. The real man behind Apple is Steve Wosniak.

[@richlaue]

Back in there 80's I was an the final testing for Perkin Elmer Computers this is how our computers where made. The processor was on 4 separate 15X30 inch board's with up to 4 more boards of memory, the memory controller and cache had their own boards. The best part is that we could step the clock and follow each bit around the processor. What you call the virtual computer we called the micro code which has the logic to control the hardware. I would love one of these.

[@xxtravdamanxx]

LYING SACK OF FUCKING WORTHLESS TRASH!!!!

[@tbthegr81]

Are ya telling me ya have never played Snake? :O Yar supposed to eat all the dots, grow bigger and the challenge is to not hit any walls or parts of yourself whilst eating as much as possible.

[@The8BitGuy]

Well, that's what I thought. But the game ended several times after growing 6 or 7 pixels long, even though I didn't hit any ways or myself.

[@joseph_b319]

Nokia 3310 cell phone days.

[@benjaminbrady2385]

joseph burtulato I’m glad somebody else remembers the days when you had to pay extra for the “super cool and innovative” polyphonic ringtones

[@martindejong3974]

if you "eat" a pixel you have eaten before you die! so that might have happened.

[@seregruin]

Also, there seems to be a timer on the top left, that gets added to, when you eat green pixels.

[@anthonyorm]

you should probably make a pinned post clarifying the snake part, so people wont leave any more comments about it lol

[@killercurl1]

this is very cool....... thanks for the long hours of editing and late night dead lines..... i hope you feel accomplishment and value in your work because i am enjoying it...

[@metatechnologist]

Since this video was released, there is a ps2 keyboard interface included with the board. Which would indicate that it is evolving in some manner.

[@und4287]

aka Pluggy McPlugface

[@nicklarocco4178]

Man I'm digging these tunes.

[@TheMrzucker21]

that music is so 80s!!

[@andreasklindt7144]

Racer!!?? Oh man!!! That just gave me some serious shivers on the retro spine!! I remember playing a game with excatly that background imagery, sound, look and feel on my Commodore C116 back when I was a little kid in the 80's!!!! Only that the car was red. there were some other opponents and it was called something else but racer. And I loved the 80's style montage sequence in your video!

[@D2Kprime]

Reminds me of the game *Turbo* which was in the arcades in the early 80s made by SEGA. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fl7QmqyKZrutZ9k

[@Kimchi_Studios]

I want to frame that Monster 6502 on my wall. Micros upgraded my whole thinking. It's like a whole new sandbox once it starts to all click in your mind. I can't stop talking about em because they are everywhere and in everything. I love teaching how to use them.

[@77tubuck]

To play snake you have to eat the dots without crashing into your tail or the walls.

[@dstinnettmusic]

So wait, you, the “classic computer guy” have never heard of snake, a classic arcade game?

[@geraldhenrickson7472]

IIt is OK to be honest concerning what you are first encountering. No one person can have experienced every game ever made. Besides...maybe it was not widely available in the U.K.

[@dstinnettmusic]

G Henrickson he lives in Texas....so....

[@dstinnettmusic]

G Henrickson did you forget who you were watching and think you were on a techmoan video? Also, Snake is like a classic game. It would be like saying you had never heard of centipede or galiga.

[@circuit10]

G Henrickson I live in the UK and I know it through Nokia phones etc. I don’t know if it was well known as an arcade game.

[@bunnybreaker]

I did a double take when he said that. Dude can literally physically build a computer and has a retro tech youtube channel, but doesn't know Snake. I'm not knocking him, of course you don't know what you don't know. It is however a bit like hearing a car expert not know what fuzzy dice are.

[@johno9507]

Load"$",8,1 ahhh that brings memories of my childhood back.

[@ueberRegenbogen]

One of the dreadfull UI things that drove me away from Commodore machines. Couldn't they have at least made it remember the last device used?

[@eamonia]

PRESS PLAY ON TAPE

[@William_sJazzLoft]

TTL is a technology I haven't heard from since I was a younger man. Thank you for sharing

[@spicypicklez6410]

The computer is great and all but LOOK AT THAT CAT! HE'S SO CUTE!

[@HelloMyNamesNino]

Spicypicklez I knew if I scrolled down enough there’d be a comment about the 🐈 😂

[@neckslicer]

who said its a "he"? i'm pretty sure its a "she"

[@webgpu]

Spicypickez, your comment means you're watching the wrong channel! 😜 heheheheh!

[@webgpu]

who said that's an "it"? i'm pretty sure that's a "carbon based lifeform"

[@Cyber_Akuma]

I was a bit worried, a cat walking near 300C+ equipment and lead

[@iwp112Gaming]

Love the 80's vibes music 🎶!

[@Telerian3]

iwp112 Gaming I was stoked myself. Shadowrun!

[@xSh4d0WxFoXx98]

I thought some of the music sounded like a Backstreet Boys song

[@AnonymousXWeirdo]

I wonder what the name of the song is

[@StarFury2]

4:29 snare sound that perfectly coincide with the chip slipping into the socket made my day :)

[@Sinn0100]

Damn man...I know quite a bit about this stuff. I built my first PC in 1994 cloned 486DX2 for Doo...I mean homework. I worked in the IT industry off and on for years. I build superguns for fun and work on old arcade cabs for fun. The reason I bring all of this up is...your knowledge is astounding. I'm learning new stuff and it's great. I know this video is at least a year old but bravo!

[@drewduncan5774]

Das Blinkenlights

[@jasonblalock4429]

You know this was created by geeks, for geeks, when . . .

[@l3p3]

Das Blinkenlights? Blinkenlights is not a german word at all.

[@jasonblalock4429]

L3 P3 "Das Blinkenlights" is old mainframe-era hacker slang, going back to the 1960s. Someone who worked on this kit is a seriously old-school. (It originated on a poster deliberately written in terrible fake german telling people to keep "der mittenhands" off the computer and "watchen das blinkenlights" instead. Or something along those lines, it's been awhile since I've seen the text.)

[@derkeksinator17]

Jason Blalock ACHTUNG! Alles touristen und non-technischen peepers! Das machine control is nicht fur gerfinger-poken und mittengrabben. Oderwise is easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowen fuse, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Der machine is diggen by experten only. Is nicht fur geverken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseenen keepen das cotten picken hands in das pockets, so relaxen und watchen das blinkenlights. Also it's dutch doing a bad job of trying to sound german

[@foureye7058]

Oof. It feels like when my sister rights facebook posts in her native Russian.

[@LMacNeill]

The original Wang 2200 minicomputer was entirely TTL-logic-chip based, and was released in 1973, a couple of years after Intel started making microprocessors. I guess it took a few years for the concept of a microprocessor to catch on with computer manufacturers.

[@peterfireflylund]

You couldn't put a lot of circuitry on a single chip back then. Chips were also extremely limited in how many pins they could have. It absolutely made sense to keep building computers out of TTL chips for quite some time.

[@ethanpoole3443]

The original Intel 4004 microprocessor IC was released in 1971, so your events are a bit out of order.

[@jlinkels]

Amazing, very nice design. And the designer knew his classics by labeling the LEDs "Blinkenlights" at 5:00. Good that there is a transparent cover to avoid gefingerpoken und mittengraben!

[@WilliamJDager]

In the 1980's, I worked for a company called Interspec, Inc., and one of the software wizards was Bill Mauchly, the son of J. William Mauchly, the inventor and builder of ENIAC at Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania Moore School of Engineering. He was just as much of a genius as his famous father, and it was my honor to have been able to work with him.

[@adikisela409]

nice..

[@denimadept]

For me, no. It doesn't have a microprocessor because it IS a processor on its own. What it needs is a header to communicate with other devices, like a proper computer processor. That'd make it useful.

[@markm0000]

I agree. For the price we need to be able to tinker around with it. Who came up with the target audience of someone that is willing to solder it together but only play a few games on it? That doesn't make sense. This has so much more potential to be something interesting. It needs a big honkin GPIO on the back and an open source firmware so it can interface with anything. Someone will easily get BASIC running on it and then we're golden. Printers, scanners, keyboards, mice, webcams, speakers, LCDs, hard drives, networking, etc. etc.

[@carrot7143]

Mark M I agree. Really you’re just getting a soldering project. You’re not gonna play these games for very long, It doesn’t have any GPIO pins, and you can’t program it on a the computer it’s self. This has so much more potential. But for $200 it just doesn’t make sense. Maybe a v2.0 will be better.

[@memmoman]

denimadept o

[@ianmoore322]

The ROM is in a DIP socket. It wouldn't be hard at all to buy an EEPROM and an external programmer as a replacement.

[@beopstek]

Good point about a breakout header. I could easily add that in a next run. You can already hook up wires directly to the output pins of the XOUT chip, but a header is much neater. The firmware and tool chain are open source and in github. The schematics will be open source soon. So far the focus has been on making the hardware ready for friends and early enthusiasts. It is still a hobby project for us. I'm working on a GCL programming tutorial as a next step with simple practical examples for learning. As David mentioned at the end, it is just a software upgrade away from being programmable on the thing itself. The Loader is a backdoor so it is not totally closed.

[@allenshepard7992]

I still have my Sinclair ZX-81 with 8K of memory instead of Gigatrons massive 32K. Great to learn new skills for what is more than a state machine but less then a general purpose computer. The loader and an EEPROM would open the door to the next step.

[@arcadesunday4592]

Wow. That must have taken a while to solder. 4:32 Inspector coming to check your work. Very cool project indeed!

[@Mbb2220]

This whole video and the music gave me such an 80’s feeling. It’s nice

[@meesguyy]

Ok time to sleep **gets notification that the 8 bit guy uploaded a video** *Sleep can wait*

[@fffUUUUUU]

pRoUD tO BE fiELdEn let me put this shit in my "nobody cares" list

[@DavidScheiber]

bout to play fortnite 8 bit guy notification fortnite can wait techmoan notification well, at this rate I don't think I will be able to play at all

[@meesguyy]

Мандибрики і Цирупопики do what you like, I don’t really care

[@SpearM3064]

Мандибрики і Цирупопики You obviously care enough to waste your time telling people that you don't care.

[@gilberttheregular8553]

LOL

[@guillermosempron5776]

Breakout is an arcade game developed and published by Atari, Inc. released on May 13, 1976.It was conceptualized by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, influenced by the 1972 Atari arcade game Pong, and built by Steve Wozniak aided by Steve Jobs.

[@barnabywilde3101]

i find IC sockets to be very valuable on projects of this size

[@johnwilson3918]

Brilliant, Thank you! I think your criticism of the chip count being high is a little unfair. The board is an excellent teaching aid on how microprocessors are designed. Reducing the chip count by using an existing microprocessor (such as the Z80 or 6502) - would in my opinion - defeat the purpose of the kit. I'm amazed that the designers have got so much 'power' in their design. My homemade microprocessor which uses TTL chips, fits on a king-sized bed and has 1K of ram and 8 instructions.

[@aprildev1]

Hahah that's cool

[@aleksvitek798]

4:32 - the reason I liked this video

[@guyonabudget5209]

I love the music!

[@ParveenThakur11213]

Complete tutorial for Learning Rasperry pi click on the link : vimeo.com/335365626

[@armincal9834]

I was born in the early 1990s but this channel makes me feel nostalgic for the 80s an 70s :l

[@djrubix4417]

your an amazing youtuber, keep up the good work ;)

[@muzzaball]

Really interesting, and affordable - what a great teaching tool. Thanks for sharing. One benefit is no Class 1 Clean Room required, so you can have your cat with you when building. Thanks again.

[@3v068]

when i was a kid, i listened to all kinds of 80's music, to the point where i got sick of listening to 80's music because i had heard it so much. hearing an original track with an 80's style in your videos is honestly really refreshing and its genuinely good music!

[@melkiorwiseman5234]

This put me in mind of Ben Eater's breadboard computer project. The cute thing about the breadboard computer is that once you understand how it works, it's not very hard to expand it, both in memory capacity and in number and type of instructions.