The role of the controller card is to operate the various control lines of the computer at the right time according to the current instruction class. It makes up a key part of the broader ‘control unit’ within the computer. It is primarily driven by the sequencer card to known ‘when’ something should happen.
Below is a list of the blog articles relating to this card (in reverse date order):
05 Dec 2022 - 8 min read
Controller Design: MOV8, MOV16 & MISC Instructions
Way back in 2019 I discussed how you can’t ‘half design a PCB’ and that, as a result, my controller cards already have all the required functionality laid …
21 Dec 2019 - 1 min read
In my last couple of posts I covered off the full design for the controller unit. As the PCBs have now arrived I can get on with soldering up the cards and giving them a test. …
20 Dec 2019 - 4 min read
Controller Design: Schematic & PCBs
In my last couple of posts I finalised the controller schematic designs for the ALU, SETAB, MOV8 and GOTO class of instructions. Now it’s time to bring all those …
07 Dec 2019 - 3 min read
Controller Design: ALU, MOV8 & SETAB Instructions
In my last post I covered off the controller design for the GOTO instruction. Being as I’ve decided to implement the controller on a new set of PCB cards I need to …
30 Nov 2019 - 3 min read
Controller Design: GOTO Instruction
With the sequencer now designed and constructed I’m much closer to getting branching working on my relay computer. The next hurdle is updating the controller cards so …
06 Oct 2019 - 4 min read
In my last post I covered the design for the GOTO opcode which will enable my relay computer to perform branching, loops and so on. Here’s where I got to last time: …
23 Sep 2019 - 7 min read
There’s been a common theme recently in the comments on my YouTube videos … people are ready to see my relay computer gain the power of branching and become a …
16 Jan 2018 - 3 min read
Fetch and Increment - Construction and Test
This is a bit of a landmark moment … at least for the construction of my relay computer. For a long time now my blog posts have been leading up to the point where my …
17 Sep 2017 - 5 min read
Control Design: Fetch and Increment
The design of the computer’s memory, incrementer and program counter are now complete but there’s one last piece of the ‘puzzle’ required to get the …
24 May 2016 - 2 min read
It’s finally time to give all the cards created so far a test so I can check everything works together as expected. This represents quite a bit of a milestone as the …
01 Jan 2016 - 3 min read
Controller Construction: MOV-8, ALU and SETAB
So yea, it’s been a while since my last post … in fact it’s been just over six months. For some reason I decided I didn’t have enough to do in the …
04 Apr 2015 - 6 min read
Control Design: MOV-8, ALU and SETAB (part 2 of 2)
In part one of this two part post I introduced the design of the control relays for each of the MOV-8, ALU and SETAB instructions. With these in hand I can now move on to …
31 Mar 2015 - 9 min read
Control Design: MOV-8, ALU and SETAB (part 1 of 2)
Over the last five posts I’ve been building up the design of a set of cards so that the computer will be able to understand and perform the MOV-8, ALU and SETAB …
19 Sep 2014 - 11 min read
Sequencing & Control Design: Overview
I’ve now got my computer to a state where I can perform ALU operations and push values around the four registers by manually operating the various control lines. …
