
TBEK: Tiny Basic Experimenters Kit (1977) - bootload
http://www.ittybittycomputers.com/IttyBitty/TinyBasic/TBEK.txt
======
ShinyCyril
It really is fascinating how up to a certain point, it was possible to
understand the workings of 90% of the early 8-bit computers. Sadly with the
vast improvements in speed and efficient comes a cavernous increase in
complexity. While the fundamentals of computer architecture haven't changed
that much, modern computers are these hugely complex beasts.

I've always been captivated by the Homebrew Computer Club and have been
considering putting together a set of tutorials which go through the steps of
creating a really basic CPU with an FPGA (perhaps a simple RISC-V core?) and
writing a toy OS to run on top of it. A lot of this stuff you learn at
Univeristy, but not everyone has that opportunity. I'd like to see a
comprehensive guide which walks someone through every step and teaches the
fundamentals of computer architecture, hardware design and systems programming
in a fun and hands-on way (it's how I've always learnt best).

Would anyone find a 'Retro PC from scratch' resource useful?

~~~
vmorgulis
It's not too much "retro", but you can find a lot of resources on OSDev:

[http://wiki.osdev.org/Main_Page](http://wiki.osdev.org/Main_Page)

The forum is very instructive too:

[http://forum.osdev.org/](http://forum.osdev.org/)

~~~
ShinyCyril
OSDev does indeed have some great resources, but sadly most of the info is
targeting x86. Of course the general principles of interrupts, framebuffer
memory etc. can be applied to other platforms provided you have an
understanding of the platform. Which I guess is the problem - there are tons
of great resources, however to fill in the gaps between them requires a
knowledge of the platform which a beginner won't have.

The best approach I've seen so far is the excellent Nand2Tetris, however it
can't run on hardware due to the custom HDL it uses.

