My brother, a software engineer, decided one day to write an OS completely in brainf*ck, called braiNIX. Knowing that I was interested in hardware, he asked me if I wanted to create a computer that could natively run his braiNIX. The braiNIAC was born.
If you are unfamiliar with brainf*ck, I highly suggest you look into it. In simple terms, it is an esoteric programming language, designed to be the simplest possible Turing-complete language. It is composed of only eight commands, that are designed to manipulate bytes of data on a tape. Wikipedia does a good job explaining it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck
The computer is constructed using 7400 series logic gates as well as static RAM, and some parallel EEPROM chips for command logic, as well as storing the program. For the time being, I am constructing the entire CPU on a number of breadboards, and it will include ro
After the completion of the IC level design, I could begin breadboarding. I began with the ROM module, which includes the 32k ROM chip and 4 4 bit counters to increment the address. You can view my designs from the last two logs, but I essentially just connected all the ICs to power and ground, wired up all the counter inputs to zero, chained them together through their clock lines, and connected all their data lines to the address pins of the ROM chip. I then connected ROM data lines and clock / reset lines from the counters to a female pin header on the breadboard for a simple user interface.
I lost my original designs when I switched computers, so I have to start from scratch on simulating the computer on Logisim. Logisim is pretty high level, so I will need to redesign the computer from the IC level after completing the simulation.