
Build Your Own PDP-11. - asciilifeform
http://www.heeltoe.com/software/pdp11/index.html
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jacquesm
Amazing stuff. Still the guy was already very good at this:

"While I was doing this I was (am) also working on a "real" cpu at a real
company doing much the same thing, only on a larger and more grand scale. And
my role is much smaller. But I've learned a lot from my day-gig and applied it
to this project."

What I wonder about is how much his experience of doing the whole thing on a
smaller scale affected his day job, I'd hope that doing the whole thing by
himself would give a completely different perspective on the work that he's
doing for a living.

One of these days I'm going to get an FPGA development kit and get my hands
dirty. The temptation is very large. (I'm holding off because I feel that it
might be just too big of a time sink).

I like his debugging technique too, a clock divider to slow down the CPU and a
bunch of led displays to show the PC.

When working on one of my own projects I used a bunch of led's hooked up to
the printer port, an out command in the main loop would indicate where the
program was (or crashed...).

~~~
CamperBob
The truly '1337 hacker will simply hold an AM radio next to the board to
diagnose a crash.

~~~
rbanffy
Only wussies need AM radios. Real hackers can do it just by looking at the
board. ;-)

~~~
jacquesm
Real hackers don't need boards, they connect the components directly.

~~~
rbanffy
Real hardcore hackers don't need components.

