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The Oasis BBSC64 Sprite Controller: Dr Matt Regan Brings Sprites to a Scratch-Built Commodore 64
#Commodore64 #C64 #RetroComputing #DigitalLogic #TTL #EPROM #HardwareHacking #ComputerArchitecture #Sprites #DrMattRegan
https://theoasisbbs.com/c64-sprite-controller-dr-matt-regan-brings-sprites-to-a-scratch-built-commodore-64/?fsp_sid=2402
pngwenI helped a student work a Hamming Code problem. This is always fun because the resultant scratch work looks so impressive, and you get to use words like "parity" and "syndrome", while the underlying concept is really quite simple. #ComputerScience #ComputerArchitecture
13
Conditions in the Intel 8087 floating-point chip's microcode
https://www.righto.com/2025/12/8087-microcode-conditions.html
#HackerNews #Intel8087 #FloatingPoint #Microcode #Technology #History #ComputerArchitecture
jleightcapspent a good chunk of the morning digging into the #ocaml hardware description language
Rtl.print Verilog
(let op = input "op" 3
and a = input "a" 8
and b = input "b" 8 in
Circuit.create_exn ~name:"alu"
[ output "out"
(mux
op
([ a +: b
; a -: b
; a *: b
; sll a 1
; srl a 1
; a &: b
; a |: b
; a ^: b
; ~:a
; a <: b
; a ==: b
; zero 8
]
|> List.map ~f:(fun x -> uresize x 8)))
])
#computerarchitecture #fpga
- what I've seen so far is very similar to cλash (the same idea but for haskell) which I enjoyed learning in the past
- it was straightforward to get it ready for nixpkgs, although there's a funny circular dependency
Rtl.print Verilog
(let op = input "op" 3
and a = input "a" 8
and b = input "b" 8 in
Circuit.create_exn ~name:"alu"
[ output "out"
(mux
op
([ a +: b
; a -: b
; a *: b
; sll a 1
; srl a 1
; a &: b
; a |: b
; a ^: b
; ~:a
; a <: b
; a ==: b
; zero 8
]
|> List.map ~f:(fun x -> uresize x 8)))
])
#computerarchitecture #fpga
Dr. Juande Santander-VelaSystem/360 was quite an engineering feat, with an architecture developed first which supported different implementations, including using microcode or not being part of the implementation details.
From the Wikipedia entry on the generic System/360 [1]:
«System/360's chief architect was Gene Amdahl and the project was managed by Fred Brooks, responsible to Chairman Thomas J. Watson Jr.»
Gene Amdahl [2] formulated the eponymous scaling law [3], while Fred Brooks [4] was the author of “The Mythical Man Month” [5], and Thomas J. Watson Jr. [6] was IBM’s second president, who managed the mainframe era of IBM. Watson, the expert system supercomputer that beat Jeopardy! in 2011 [7] was named after his father, IBM’s original founder.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Amdahl
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J._Watson_Jr.
[7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Watson
https://stefanbohacek.online/@discontinued/115797198191231974
#retrocomputing #IBM #SystemScaling #Scalability #ComputerArchitecture #System360 #IBMSystem360
compare:
Texas Instruments, hand-drafted logic chip (c. 1976)
Frank Lloyd Wright — Fugue (1927)
#computerarchitecture #retrocomputing
Texas Instruments, hand-drafted logic chip (c. 1976)
Frank Lloyd Wright — Fugue (1927)
#computerarchitecture #retrocomputing
('70s EDN reading cont.)
even the diagramming isn't spared some psychedelic design
#computerarchitecture
even the diagramming isn't spared some psychedelic design
#computerarchitecture
ETH-Zurich: Digital Design and Computer Architecture; 227-0003-10L, Spring, 2025
https://safari.ethz.ch/ddca/spring2025/doku.php?id=start
#HackerNews #ETHZurich #DigitalDesign #ComputerArchitecture #Spring2025 #Education