british nutter, wonder if he rides a Guzzi

[mtiberio]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/23/brit_mega_processor/

[Vasco DG]

Presumably he does this when taking time out from playing World of Warcraft in a darkened room surrounded by empty pizza boxes and stained tissues in filthy, unwashed underwear.

Sorry, I don't *Get it*.

After all, I'm perfectly sane!

Pete

[sib]

Wouldn't be truly impressive unless he also builds the transistors themselves by hand.

[charlie b]

Yep, or build tubes.

Given all the hoopla today, why not a Turing machine.  Mechanical computer.

[mtiberio]

yes, lets go way back...



How many of you built crystal radios?

[Silver Goose]

Way to much time on his hands or he got paid by the hour.

All of this work just to play a game.

[cloudbase]

How many of you built crystal radios?

I did.  Wound my own coil on a Quaker Oats box.  Been a licensed ham since 1970.

[Lannis]

Way to much time on his hands or he got paid by the hour.

All of this work just to play a game.

I'm sort of the same way about mechanical models.

When I see that someone has built a beautiful, perfect-to-scale, maybe even running 1/10 scale model of, say, an MV Agusta 750, my thought is "What a waste!  He could have built a REAL one for that amount of time investment!".

Or an "Iron Butt" rider.   Their goal is to burn miles.   Not see things, not go places, just see how many miles, tires, and gallons of gasoline you can burn in a day.   Would bore me to death, I'd rather just ride on a treadmill, or sand my tires down to the cord on a belt sander. 

They're just doing it for fun.   It's not "work"!

Lannis

[charlie b]

I did.  Wound my own coil on a Quaker Oats box.  Been a licensed ham since 1970.

yes, lets go way back...

How many of you built crystal radios?

Yep, Boy Scout project.  That was before affordable "pocket" radios.

I did design a computer that I was going to build.  8085 processor.  The project stalled cause 1k of RAM was going to cost me almost $1000. 

[Penderic]

Who has'nt made their own thorium reactor from a kit? 

[Mark West]

As someone who works in the semiconductor business, I think it's pretty cool and hope it ends up in a museum somewhere as an educational tool. Even working with this kind of stuff every day for the last 33 years I often overlook just how freaking amazing the technology is.

Most people don't even stop to think about what is inside that fingernail size piece of silicon that is running their phone or PC. It's almost like magic. Seeing it as discrete transistors allows people to get a better idea of what is going on inside their gadget. To see how much work is involved in making what is a very crude microprocessor by today's standards, will give people a better appreciation for the technology they use every day.

I remember talking with someone at Intel many years ago and him telling me their new chip would have a million transistors. It seemed impossible and amazing. Nobody knew how far they could shrink transistors and interconnects. Now some chips have more than two billion and there are still a few generations left to shrink before we reach the limit of what is possible.

Some may choose to spend thousands of hours building a scale model of a Ferrari V-12. some may choose to build a microprocessor from discrete components. Both are challenging projects that require skill, knowledge, and ambition.

[SteveAZ]

Mark West, +1 to your post. I'm an aerospace engineer and a big part of me is impressed that this guy knows processors so well that he's building one from scratch. It will be a fantastic learing tool when completed. It's the sparky version of cutaway turbo fan engine with all the little maps and arrows showing how air+fuel+pressure and a little fire leads to one flying through the air at Mach 3 

Sure it's a bit nutty but hell, there are enough people with their hands firmly gripped onto the boring middle rail in life.

[Lannis]

Mark West, +1 to your post. I'm an aerospace engineer and a big part of me is impressed that this guy knows processors so well that he's building one from scratch. It will be a fantastic learing tool when completed. It's the sparky version of cutaway turbo fan engine with all the little maps and arrows showing how air+fuel+pressure and a little fire leads to one flying through the air at Mach 3 

Sure it's a bit nutty but hell, there are enough people with their hands firmly gripped onto the boring middle rail in life.

Anybody remember the "DigiComp I" from Edmund Scientific?  An actual manual digital computer that you could program to do arithmetic and execute simple programs by setting little levers and ratchets.   I learned how the things worked when I bought and assembled one of those .....

Lannis

[tiger_one]

I always said, a computer is just a bunch of "and", "or", "nor" gates.  LOL

[Toecutter]

Well , how many folks have poured thousands of dollars and hours into an old motorbike that is worth 1/2 the investment after completion ? Computers are his passion , better than an addiction to old HDs   

Hey, I've got a CB750 SOHC that has cost me 4 times what I will ever get in resale. Hobbies don't need to make sense... and, It could be argued, maybe they shouldn't make sense. 

[rboe]

Ditto Mark West. When I was in computer support and things didn't quite work the way folks expected I explained to them that if they had any idea how things went on inside the computer they's be amazed it worked at all. The structures are so small, the speeds so damn fast. I'm still amazed.

That is one cool project by the way. My hat is off to him. And he is a bit nutters. http://wildguzzi.com/forum/Smileys/default/azn.gif