The Ware for November 2024 is shown below. Click on any image for a larger version.
I have a policy of never using one of my own projects for name that ware. But, sometimes I see another person’s project in the wild and it is just too cool not to share! I came across this ware recently and fell in love with it instantly. It’s the sort of thing I’ve always dreamed of doing, but didn’t have the resources to do it when I had the time, and when I finally had the resources, I no longer had the time.
The images for this month are somewhat redacted to make it a little more challenging, but … you might get an idea of what’s going on, and yah, it’s exactly that. How cool! I’ll share more details next month. My gut tells me one of my subscribers is going to have seen this thing somewhere already on the Internet, so I’m betting there will be an ID on it shortly in the comments, despite the redactions.
It’s a nicely built 16 bit NAND logic processor.
The text on the board with register names (SP, reg A) and 16 LEDs showing the register content are probably the main giveaway.
A link to a twitter post with the same picture also came up as the first google search result.
It looks interesting, so I’ll be running it through google translate to figure out what it can do.
https://github.com/cherry-takuan/nlp
From the photos alone I would guess it’s a CPU built with low integration discrete components with just a few logic gates per chip. Reverse image search tells me it’s called “NLP-16A” and this website has more info about it: https://cherry-takuan.org/article/?id=43
This thing seems to have at least 12 x 16-bit registers.
Guessing a 16-bit CPU of some kind. 8086?
I was thinking the same. A CPU. Then I thought, maybe a controller for some Blinkenlights-like thing, and the top board might be some sort of I/O board. I tried finding something based on the chip (like: “7400 cpu”, “7400 Blinkenlights”), but came up empty. But I think 7400 is 4 NAND gates, and “NAND cpu” finds this:
NLP-16: https://cherry-takuan.org/article/?id=3
Their pics on their homepage show all the LEDs in action, so it’s really a Blinkenlights thing after all. And a very pretty one. :)
It’s a hardware hacker’s Christmas tree / holiday decoration ;)
Joking aside. It’s obviously a CPU built from 74-series logic.
There some 8008/8080 vibes with A-D for register names. However it uses IP instead of PC. It also seems to have a dedicated register for an interrupt vector (IV), which seems to have been a thing in the 68000. My guess is that it’s a custom design.
This is a blinkenlight.
Everyone’s already done a great job of identifying this as a CPU built from discrete 74-series logic, and reverse image search also got me right to the project page. What a neat build!
I love the note of “It’s the sort of thing I’ve always dreamed of doing” because that instantly told me exactly what it was. What engineer hasn’t dreamed of building their own CPU out of discrete components?