“Fear is a real killer. I try to trudge through the jungle with as little fear as possible.”
William Shockley
This is my adaptation of the Ben Eater breadboard computer he completed in a YouTube series. (see YouTube Icon below) While Ben Eater made an 8 bit computer, I increased it to a 16 bit computer; this allows me to have 256 instructions rather than Ben’s 16 instructions. Additionally I added an address bus, allowing both address and data information to be displayed at once. I modularized each component so that I can quickly expand on the design and created an I/O structure that will quickly allow me to add different I/O circuits later.
This is my first real introduction into breadboard circuit designs. I tend to jump right into large projects that seem scary and daunting at first, but by breaking the project into pieces the project seems manageable. This project is still in progress. As I make changes to the breadboards you will see updates here.
While this is a breadboard computer, I eventually would like to move this project off breadboards and on to modular PCB boards in order to make things more permanent. I created a CircuitMaker account (see Chain Icon below) and am currently in the middle of creating and upload the PCB designs there.
As part of this project, I needed to create the Microcode that defines the Assembly Language that will drive this computer. I have included an Excel spreadsheet with my truth tables that you can download to see both Microcode and the Assembly Instructions.
Downloadable Files
Design Files
In this collection you can see the circuit design files I created. The actual files themselves as well as the PCB design can be seem on my CircuitMaker account.
The InterNetwork 