My retro 8 bit computer.

The beginning of an 8 bit computer. It's in the spirit of the Altair. It's running on a pic 18F4685. It has 256 bytes of memory. At the moment it has a very small list of opcodes, but I will be adding to them.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• bit
• 256
• byte
• altair
• kenback
• vintage
• computer
• retrocomputer
• toggle
• switch
• leds
• 18f4685
• pic
• microcontroller

[mkarcz12]

Cool project. Did you make the front panel all by yourself?

[Kaos116]

@mkarcz12 Yes I did. We have a laser engraver at work. To stay proficient with it, we are allowed to do small projects on it. The panel is engraved on the back. This leaves the front completely smooth. I love how it came out.

[AtariXcore]

Alpha Alpha. or AA or 1010 1010 I picked up on that :) and for this... I went to college.

Impressive little set up. The toggle switches are going from floating, high or low? and is the writing in your note-pad really the entire program?

[Kaos116]

@AtariXcore They are double throw switches. They either apply +5v or ground to the pins. I can't float the pins, so I don't think I will be able to let anything else control the buses. What you can see in the notebook is the assembly code for the little program I toggled in. The code in the PIC Microcontroller interpereting that code is a bit longer ;-)

[geoman298]

do you have the schematic

[Kaos116]

@geoman298 No, I haven't drawn one up. There is not much to it. The LEDs have current limiting resistors. The switches are wired directly to power and ground. The address LEDs are on PORTA. The data LED's are on PORTB. The switches are tied to PORTD. The other LEDs and switches are tied to PORTC & E.

All the work is being done in software. This is not what I would consider a true 8-bit computer. It's more like an emulator.

[supercaleb08]

You should use real logic gates