
High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch - neovive
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/wow-high-school-grad-builds-8-bit-computer-from-scratch-complete-with-custom-os-and-pong/
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tetrarchy
Wow, tough crowd here. When I was in high school, the extent of my computer
knowledge was a little visual basic. After watching all of his videos, I'm
extremely impressed - it looks like he designed (or at least integrated) a lot
of the hardware, operating systems, and applications himself. After a BS and
now almost a MS in computer engineering I think I could (...eventually) pull
something like this off, but this guy clearly spent a lot of time and effort
on learning the ins and outs of computer architecture on his own, in high
school no less.

To those complaining that this could be done on a fpga in verilog or
something, I think that might be kind of missing the point. There is just
something about building the logic up from the ground that is very satisfying.
Hooking up the physical wires makes it all that much more real. A huge time
investment, but i got the feeling the kid spent a good deal of his free time
on it.

So again, mad props. Hope it gets him into a sweet school.

~~~
slunk
"Wow, tough crowd here."

Yeah, no kidding. I just graduated from a computer engineering program and I
still find this impressive, especially for a high school student. What could I
do with a computer right out of high school? Code some java or c++ (poorly)
and install linux on it? That's about it.

~~~
conradev
Not speaking against this kid in particular, what he did was cool, but there
are plenty of high school kids who can write professional quality code (in a
multitude of languages) and know a lot about the internals of a computer.
Speaking from experience, its annoying when age becomes a matter of
importance.

~~~
slunk
It might just be the high school I attended but I can only think of one kid
out of about 3000 in the entire school who was intimidatingly competent with
computers. I can see where you're coming from. Making too big of a deal out of
his age might be annoying to some people but with age comes experience and all
the anecdotal evidence at my disposal says that most high schoolers don't have
this experience yet. :/

~~~
slunk
To be clear, the reason why I find this impressive is because I would assume
it implies a significant amount of studying in his free time since computer
architecture isn't exactly standard high school curriculum.

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zeteo
By some definition of "scratch", we've also built 8-bit computers from scratch
in my Electronics class. My respect for this student's accomplishment is
proportional to how much of the processor he has designed and built himself;
opcode design and management is a highly nontrivial task. On the other hand,
if he has built the processor from pre-existing schematics, the accomplishment
simply shows a steady soldering hand and good mental endurance.

~~~
palish
Did you watch the video? This is inspiring to me on many levels.

This probably earned him a salaried job at essentially any place he wants to
work. Or at the very least an internship.

I hope he considers skipping college. There's no reason for him to be driven
into ~$50k worth of debt, and I've certainly been happy with my decision not
to go.

~~~
SwellJoe
While I think the kid is awesome, I don't think it follows that skipping
college is the best choice. If he's as brilliant as he seems, he ought to be
able to get scholarships to some pretty good schools...where he can learn to
go well beyond this, probably faster than he could on his own; even if it's
just for the resources a good technical university (like MIT, Caltech,
Stanford, etc.) provides.

He could be working with supercomputing, nanotech, quantum computing,
Internet-scale problems, etc. in a couple of years at one of those schools. It
would take much longer to get there on the DIY path. I know of what I speak: I
went the path of most resistance and I was in my late 20s by the time I really
started working with people I considered on or above my level and getting paid
fairly for it...i.e. building things that millions of people use. I'm probably
not as smart as this kid, admittedly, but I'm enough above average to know
what his career path will most likely look like if he opts to skip university.

I'm not suggesting he won't be a monstrous success in the future. I'm pretty
confident he will be. But, why not take the short cut?

It's the folks who _aren't_ brilliant, that I think should skip college, or
choose a super cheap school. Brilliant people should at least spend a few
years in the environment of a great school so they can get a feel for how wide
and accommodating the world is for a brilliant individual with drive and
ambition.

~~~
palish
This is an excellent and important point. If your ambitions lie along the
lines of "supercomputing, nanotech, quantum computing, Internet-scale
problems," etc, then skipping college is a terrible mistake, obviously.

It comes down to what _he_ wants. Personally, I wanted freedom from debt,
freedom from high school, and the freedom to work with creative people. Those
factors made me decide to drop out of high school ( _after_ I had landed a
game development internship, i.e. a solid job and therefore a solid resume for
the future).

~~~
encoderer
I think it's important to not seem like you're looking down on people who DO
chose to go to college. Because surely you wouldn't like it if they looked
down upon you?

Truth is you do get a lot more from college for your debt load than just job
training.

(And just so you know, I went, but didn't finish, largely because I found
myself making a very good living developing software and also because my
personality has never accommodated being part of the student-underclass.)

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Almaviva
Connecting this with the article about the person who smelted his own sword, I
wonder if it's possible for one person to single-handedly build a computer
starting from Stone Age technology and raw materials?

~~~
redthrowaway
Sure it is, but you have to define it better. He could build a difference
engine much easier than he could build a system-on-chip. The difference engine
would require metalworking and precision tools; the SoC would require a
working digital computer to design, which requires lasers and other production
technologies that in turn require advanced production technologies to make.
Even if you just wanted to make a basic 4-bit machine with vacuum tubes, you'd
still have to invent all of the preceding requisite technologies just to make
the constituent components.

A mechanical device would be much easier, and would be well within the
capability of a single person with all of the prerequisite knowledge to make.
Just look at the Antikythera Mechanism.

~~~
noonespecial
This french HAM just about has it covered. He makes his tubes from nearly
scratch.

<http://boingboing.net/2008/09/18/video-of-a-guy-who-m.html>

~~~
redthrowaway
That's hardly from scratch, though. Just look at all the different tools he
uses. We didn't even have glasswork precise enough to use until the 18th
century. Add arc welders, all of the chemicals (and chemi _stry_ , mining,
etc) needed to make filaments, and everything else required and I doubt a
person with full knowledge and access to all of the base materials, as they
exist in nature, would be able to build a computer in their lifetime.

~~~
jquery
> full knowledge and access to all of the base materials, as they exist in
> nature, would be able to build a computer in their lifetime.

Even that's a huge head start over having to mine the raw materials.

It would probably take several lifetimes to build even the most basic computer
from complete scratch even with all the manufacturing knowledge available.

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misuse-permit
I'm sure it helps to have the right parents too. When I was in elementary
school, I showed great curiosity for how our old Macintosh worked, but the
internet wasn't around, there were no relevant books in the public library,
and my parents didn't know jack-shit about computers.

My point is, with the right upbringing, we would all be like this. I'd like to
learn more about this kids childhood. I wonder if, like me, he also went to
run-down public high school and had technologically illiterate parents. If
that the case, I'd be super impressed. Until then, I'm just mildly impressed
and slightly jealous.

~~~
Confusion
On that tangent: I've always wondered how things would have turned out if my
parents had been savvy enough to provide me with the right book, when it
turned out I couldn't understand enough of the English (not my native
language) BASIC manual that came with my dad's first PC somewhere mid-to-end-
eighties (when I was < 10).

However, I don't think any advantages in that regard detract from this
achievement. Even if our parents had nudged us in the right direction, we may
have been content doing many 'half' programs. Technical abilities are
independent of the persistence required for a larger project such as this (or
beginning a startup, for what that is concerned!).

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emmelaich
This is great. Here's another one from a 15/16 year old in 1981.
<http://unauthorised.org/dhog/ruse.html>

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joshzayin
Also see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2667357> for his website
documenting this.

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kragen
The instruction set looks pretty nice — a small but practical set of opcodes
and a 6502-like zero page to simplify instruction encoding and address
calculation.

The article is pretty bad. For me,
<http://web.mac.com/teisenmann/iWeb/adeptpage/menu.html> is much better,
although it doesn't contextualize the project as well as it might.

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Tichy
Is it bad if I have mixed feelings about this? With such skills, why not
invent something new?

I think if I were to build some stuff from scratch, maybe I would try to build
a gene assembler (whatever they called that thing, where you can feed a gene
sequence into it and it assembles a real gene from it). That's something you
can't buy in every supermarket yet.

~~~
brianleb
You have to start somewhere, don't you think? He can't just start at the top
and assume he knows how to build something. And there are certainly many
lessons to be learned by building something that is already well understood
(as many people seem to be attesting to in these comments). Consider it
"practice before the big game," where "the big game" is hopefully something he
does in ten years that makes people's lives a little better.

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derrida
To choose to go to this level of depth shows remarkable curiosity in a
highschool student.

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accepted
_You think you’re smart? Well, not as smart as this guy_

Challenge accepted.

But I still think using just TTL chips is a little over the top. There are
much better ways than that.

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yoyoyogi
I thought we all did this?

~~~
derrida
Where is your computer?

~~~
yoyoyogi
Sold the parts to an undergrad cmpe student.

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chopsueyar
This one is from 2007...

[http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/DIY-CPU-demod-
runnin...](http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/DIY-CPU-demod-running-
Minix/)

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zbowling
I built one in redstone in Minecraft. Did I win an internet?

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ltamake
Nothing new, but still pretty cool. Good for him.

