Also, for a bit more money, there are lots of new hobbyist computers out there, including the RC2014, Stephen C. Cousins’ “SC___” series, and the MinZ / eZ-Tiny series. You can solder them together and program however you like, oftentimes including booting CP/M off of ROM, MicroSD, Compact Flash, or floppy.
I was wondering about that, I didn't see anything about the couch in the text but I was thinking about it.
One of the essential first steps in many a worthwhile project is to focus the necessary determination, whatever it takes, on initially getting up off the couch.
Nice. After decades of high level software development, I’m starting to get back in to microcontroller/processor and “bare metal” development. I first learned to code with Basic and Assembly on the Z80 inside the early Sinclair products. I’m having fun now with the ARM cores in the various cheap Raspberry products (the Pi 4b and Pico so far).
I did come across the Ben Eater series which looks awesome too. (https://eater.net/). I’m excited to try and build a video card from scratch!
There’s so many options today it’s almost overwhelming. I’ve been trying to think how to best introduce my youngest without bewildering him. Anyone had success on a “low level” path with young kids that kept them entertained?
This is super cool. When I was in college I used a breadboarded Z80 with an FPGA to build a really simple video game system with VGA output and a Genesis controller for input. The schematics, source code, and project write up are still on my home page (http://trzy.org — near the bottom). I should probably throw it up on GitHub.
Using the Arduino is a great idea. It can provide scaffolding during the development process, and can replaced with something better suited to the task when they are ready.
The test harness! When one lacks more sophisticated gear, this is a great way to get started and have a chance at success.
BTW: I love Propeller chips for this purpose!
They are multiprocessors in both the parallel and concurrent sense and that makes them quite useful! One can build up simple scopes, logic analyzers, signal generators, and other useful tools and use the chip to both display output, measure and more.
* Timex-Sinclair 1000 (American ZX81 with double the RAM — an entire 2KiB!)
* TI 81-86 graphing calculators
* Verifone Tranz 330 https://www.bigmessowires.com/mozart-tranz-330/
* Cidco MailStation https://jcs.org/2019/05/03/mailstation
Also, for a bit more money, there are lots of new hobbyist computers out there, including the RC2014, Stephen C. Cousins’ “SC___” series, and the MinZ / eZ-Tiny series. You can solder them together and program however you like, oftentimes including booting CP/M off of ROM, MicroSD, Compact Flash, or floppy.