14 May 2022 - 9 min read
Assembling an assembler - overview
To make my relay computer do something interesting (or anything at all) it needs a list of instructions held in memory. Each instruction consists of an 8-bit value called an …
02 May 2022 - 4 min read
So, is fair to say that things have been a bit quiet around here of late … and if you’ve been following my YouTube channel I do hope you haven’t been holding your breath for …
01 Feb 2020 - 2 min read
As the clock struck midnight at the very end of 2019 I decided, over a glass of something sparkling, that I’d set myself a challenge to put out a series of six YouTube …
05 Jan 2020 - 1 min read
In my last post I covered off the full design for the decoder card so all that remains is to get it soldered up and tested. As before I’ve put a video together which …
22 Dec 2019 - 4 min read
Decoder Design: Schematic & PCBs
I’ve almost got everything I need now to get my relay computer to do branching. The hard work of designing and constructing the sequencer and controller units is …
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 …
20 Nov 2019 - 2 min read
In my last couple of posts I covered off the full design for the sequencer unit. With PCBs now safely arrived in the post I can get on with soldering up the cards and giving …
11 Nov 2019 - 5 min read
Sequencer Design: Schematic & PCBs
I’ve got the designs for the 24-cycle FSM and pulse distribution in place so all that’s left for the sequencer is to bring the schematics together and then design …
02 Nov 2019 - 2 min read
Sequencer Design: Pulse Distribution
In my last post I extended the 8-cycle FSM (finite state machine) design all the way up to 24-cycles so that we can run longer and more complicated instructions. In this case …