Reply to post: Its Art, but really what's the point?

Its Art, but really what's the point?

Back in those good old days processors were made from transistors or small scale integrated circuits. Although they're a bit of a pain to make they're architecture is in many ways quite advanced compared to many modern processors because their design had to take into account the relatively long delays in the wiring. You didn't do the bus architecture like these micros had -- this was a relatively recent innovation, something that I associate with a PDP-11 -- but rather used data highways to circulate information. ("Reinvented by Rambus"). It was OK for the year but when the LSI parts turned up I for one went straight for them -- wire wrap is tedious.

These days if you want a retro processor you've got a couple of options. One is just the software simulator, accurate but not very interesting. The other is to use an inexpensive FPGA.. FPGAs host soft processors like the Microblaze or Micos; these are quite fast 32 bit machines so there would be plenty for room for an 8 bit device. In fact with all the other bits and pieces in a modern FPGA you'd have no problem building the rest of the computer -- peripherals, memory and so on -- inside it..

BTW --

1) I dragged out an old (1985) PC-XT clone out the attic recently and ran it up. They're not as interesting as they sound -- my (cheap) phone is many hundreds of times larger and more powerful.

2) I am familiar with valves because I have valve audio equipment. It sounds nice but you look at something like its FM tuner and think "Is this all it does?". I pair mine up with an Internet tuner; I think I should change that source for an Alexa enabled 'dot' (plus an IoT enabled switch to power the thing on and off). Now that's what I call 'art'.