We'll I've been busy working out more details of my design in Logisim. I was finding it very helpful to think through my design by building the schematics in Upverter. I was working on the instruction decoder and was finding myself needing to figure out some logic. I was scribbling on paper to try and work it out when I thought I'd try and use Logisim. I had never used it before and didn't really want to learn another piece of software.
Wow, I'm sure glad I did. What a nice little program it is. I should have listened to @roelh 's advice to begin with. It's been really helpful in working out the details of the design. It doesn't have a library of standard IC's so I started my own library of the chips I'm using. I used the schematics from datasheets. I put in Schematics for for the 181 ALU and the 193 up/down counter that I'm using for my registers. Logisim does have an up/down counter in it's library but I built them from the schematics so I would hopefully simulate the same behavior.
I'm getting close to finishing the whole design. I still haven't received all of the components I need to start building on breadboard, but maybe it's not such a bad thing to be forced to do only planning before actually wiring anything.
I'll add a screen shot of the main circuit. If anyone's interested in the files let me know.
Discussions
Become a Hackaday.io Member
Create an account to leave a comment. Already have an account? Log In.