How can I never seen this project of yours before? IO is absolutely amazing! From the concept of its parts , its assembly, and the hypnotic blinking of its leds! I bow in respect!

Thank you for the kind words my friend. IO has been here on HaD for a while but I tend to stand back. I have learned a lot and the basic circuit and construction is so simple that anyone of any age can build and learn this way. Yes I do like blinking leds but they all do act as indicators of various sections of this project :-D

Want to welcome @Dylan C.

To the Cardboard Computer team :-)

Hey Mark, I see you entered your project for the 2017 prize! I'm really glad you did and the best of luck my friend :)

Hey thanks David, If nothing comes of the contest then at least I am having fun. It's interesting to see just how low tech I can be and still do this. Like in the T.V. ad,"  Even a caveman can do it " :-)

Interesting quote, there in the details regarding public-labs. And you already know I think this is a cool project.

Hey there :-) The quote just struck me the right way and I really hate to conform so David let me use it :-) I like working and thinking out of the box ( Ohhh I just had to say that ) :-D

Hey Mark, your "baby" is looking very cool, actually I think I'm going to find some old pics of the CP901 (similar to the CPU in the P-3 Orion back in my day) man this thing is really looking mean...in the best way!

Hey thanks David. There is a lot more to go before even the first instruction flows through but it is coming along and I am learning a lot :-)

Hi Mark!

Thank you for the invitation of contributor to your awesome project... Its a cardboard revolution! :-)

:-)

Hey Jez, That's a revolution on two fronts ;-)

This is incredible work. My one caution is the choice of cardboard as a circuit substrate. If anything shorts or overheats, it’ll go off like a bomb. Corrugated cardboard is particularly bad, because the spacing within it ensures there’s plenty of oxygen to fuel the fire.

Please think about this. If nothing else, keep an extinguisher handy, and don’t leave it running unattended.

I am making sure that all stages are running cool and very low current, but perhaps placing milliamp fuses in various places would be wise :-) I had not thought about the fire hazzard till now :-O

Don't know how reliable this is.  With the good old Borax...

http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Flame-retardant/

>This technique will only work for natural materials such as wood, cotton, jute, and paper or the like.

Read the comment part.

BTW stand alone vertical arrangement of paper burns the fastest, but there aren't much fuel.

The Borax is something to look into, will have to test first as to how conductive the Borax would be as well as how the solution would affect the glues in the cardboard. Thanks for the link :-)

Congrats on the blog writeup!

Thanks Ted, I still have a long way to go and lots and lots to learn :-) I am currently redoing the PC from ideas and nudges from you all. ( getting rid of the pulser boards...)

Nice.  I saw you mention you don't currently have a scope - that's probably where one would help most.  How fast do you think your clock will be?  If you can test it at less than 20 kHz or so, you can use a sound card as a low-frequency scope - a quick search should turn up some software solutions.  Some soundcards (like those used for some software-defined-radio projects) go even higher than 20 kHz.  I used a soundcard-based spectrum analyzer to test some audio noise generators, and it was surprisingly good.  I haven't played with a soundcard scope for a long time, but I'd be willing to bet there's something decent out there.

Hi Ted, I do have some sound card scope software here that works well, however right now my clock is around 3hz and that is below what the scope can see. Not a major problem yet and I will speed things up once various sections start talking to each other :-) And you knew about the blog before I did :-)

I am going to keep one pulser  for the sequencer circuit as that might be the only stage that will require edge triggering.

Wait... Why would you even need a 555 ? :-D

Well, I was having my doubts about the transistor osc signal being clean enough ( Was still in the dark about level triggering ) and used the 555. I will change back to transistor later, just not a priority at the moment :-)

Another cool circuit to try...
You know, you could use a basic classic astable oscillator with 2 transistors to generate a square-ish signal :-)

however the astable oscillator is more delicate/fragile/picky than a relaxation oscillator or an inverter-based, hysteretic oscillator... Just add an amplifying stage (or two) to create proper edges :-)

The astable was what I started with but again, I was/am new to this and was not sure at the time :-) Well, time to get breakfast ready for the residents at work. Yumm

When an artist's work grows too big to move, he calls it an Installation...

:-)

Awesome project! Seeing this took me back to my early teens reading about Babbage and Turing in the village library, playing with electronics kits and discovering the school had a BBC Micro in a cupboard in the Maths Room that nobody knew how to use.

I'd like to draw your attention to Nyles Steiner's (http://sparkbangbuzz.com/memristor/memristor.htm) experiments with Memristors. These are simply-constructed doped crystal junctions that exhibit programmable resistance. The device then is a passive 2-pin solid state memory cell that could be used to provide EEPROM type memory for your processor, perhaps to store commands in?

In operation, a single gate is programmed with a high forward voltage (9v) which makes the junction thereafter conductive to a low forward voltage (3v) and highly resistive to a low reverse voltage. A high reverse voltage makes the junction thereafter conductive to a low reverse voltage and highly resistive to a low forward voltage. The device is behaving like a Tunnel Diode that can be made to change polarity by over-driving it. The gate can then be tested with a smaller voltage to determine polarity and thus state... Which is stored physically in the crystal lattice, requiring power only to read or change its state.

I have successfully followed Nyles' experiment and built a 6 bit 'flash' memory cell using an Atmel, a handful of 3904s, LEDS and some scrap copper and aluminium, but it appears you have more ambition and patience than I ;)

Hacky New Year...

Thank you for the awesome :-) I have looked at the idea of memristors a little bit but for this project I will stay with what parts I have on hand. Back in the late 70's A group of friends and I built a Imsai 8080 and had a ball learning to catch the rabbit on the led display. No keyboard or video then for us :-) I would at least like to repeat that program on this machine.

Hacky New Year to you as well..

I just have to admire the look of Cray super, with a hint of Practical Electronics that has about it besides what it actually does. Literally old school... You sir, are an artist.

It was just those brass studs begging for a little sulphur and a tinfoil hat that appealed to my artistic nature as well as my sense of humour. There is a delicious irony in constructing things from ingredients, its a sort of alchemy... I have a thing for copper myself, it is beautiful, structural and its oxides sensitive to heat, light and pressure as well as having electrical memory. I've built many experimental devices and sensors using copper, household chemicals, heat and water just to learn from. 

One must however respect cardboard. ;-)

Hmmm. Around then I remember being ushered into Careers, a room with a large table littered with cards; farmer, postman, lawyer... In the corner was a box with a keyboard and a screen, a CBM Pet. It wasnt even switched on.

"Oh, thats a computer," the Careers Officer said. "Pay no mind to that boy, it will never catch on." I'd love to go back and show him the waterproof battery powered touchscreen computer I wear on my wrist today, a direct descendent of the BBC that inspired me to wait all these years for it to become small enough.

I wish you luck with your endeavour.

Good morning, Well, I guess that every thing we do or construct is alchemy in one form or another. Just keep that cup of coffee away from my cardboard ;-D  I do wonder if my studs will work that way, might have to remove any protective coating first. That melts away when I solder. I sure would like to get my hands on a Pet. My first comp of my own was a trs-80 and a few zx-81's. As the years move on, I find I no longer can keep up with the internal workings these days. I am 60 and want to go back to more basic times so this project might scratch that itch :-)

I might have to change the shape as I can see that I will run out of room. Might have to put the panels on a wall but I do like the cray type shape. It will be heavy to move around.

Take care

Hey Mark, I think I understand a part of what you are doing now, you are utilizing a large part of your present inventory of components. I should have read further in the details section, you did mention the '2222's, I am trying to think of something simpler that can be used that is just as effective. 

If your wife complains, tell her you got 1.6k views already. Amazing !

Well Mark, you are certainly thinking outside the box...and I luv it!

I hate say to say this but instead of thinking out of the box.... I'm using it :-D

Ha ha, yes, you are right, a hint...using a 2n2222a (NPN)  can be used for small signal switching, if that helps.

Currently I have used up all of my 2222's . That is why I switched to the 3906 pnp's I still have. I still have about 180 of them left. I still have around 130 1N914 diodes.

If you need a few hundreds of BC550 and 1N4148, just tell me where to send them ;-)

You got Yann :-)

This is very clever! 

Thanks, I am thrifty by nature and am having fun and learning at the same time on the cheap.

Man. this is a lot more than "thrifty," I almost think it boarders on ZEN-like! My present project is the first 1 of mine, that has the sophistication that it has, though most of the parts I design myself to save money.

I was thinking about those bimetallic blinkers for Xmas tree lights as make shift switches, but I think their response time would be way too slow to be even effective for this project. I don't know, I'm always thinking of the weirdest things!

Weird is good ( sometimes ). I have made a lot of ham radio projects that were no more than 3 or 4 transistors so this computer is way over the top for me. My wife asks me how are we going to move this thing if we relocate in a few years. I have no idea. One of many good things about HaD is thinking out of the box. By building ourselves, we can flex our thinking as much as we want to and share with other weird folks :-)

You nailed it, Mark :-)

I went shopping today at a Habitat restore ( thrift store ) and bought a string of holiday white LED's for 1 dollar. It's a rats nest of wires but seems to be over 200 LED's so not a bad deal. At a initial look each LED runs at 3 to 4 volts at 3.75 ma. I self destructed one at 5 volts. Now I have plenty for this cardboard project for my output display panel.

Great idea - they have leads already attached, too :-)

I have often thought about cheap incandescent holiday bulbs for homemade PROMs inside a diode array - apply 12V to program (burn out the zero bits), and normal logic levels to read.  Just replace the burned bulbs to erase.  Incandescent strings  are becoming tougher to find, though...and you would have to avoid those burn-proof ones with the shorting links around the inner terminals.

Not only the LED's but all of the wire will be used on the build as well. I went to Wally world also hoping to find the same but only the incandescent types were still on sale., the led strings were already gone for the season. Now back to soldering the dmux gates :-)

Well.... The ALU and decoder boards are using thumb tacks on wood bases. The wood I had to buy, the cardboard is free, lighter and easier to cut to size. As far as leakage, just have to wait and see. I could apply a non-conductive coating first but then I would have to spend money and I am a cheap builder :-)

So it was thumb tacks initially? :)
I chose the same approach, but with "Cork Tiles":
https://hackaday.io/project/10724-germanium-calculus/log/50805-the-corkboard-computer

Apparently a new trend has been created ! :-D

Yup. I had constructed some radio projects with thumb tacks years ago. I can't take credit for the idea as I found a project online back 15 years that used them.

The thumb tack revolution has started. Yesssss !

At first I thought they were thumbtacks, and couldn't figure out how they stayed put :-)

Those fasteners are a great idea!

If you end up with leakage issues in humid environments, you could also substitute corrugated plastic board:

http://www.artsupply.com/foamcore/plasticor.htm

Although I'm not sure how well it stands up to soldering...

Amazing project. Very hands on and very informative. This makes for a great deep look into how our tech shizzlewhizzle works under the epoxy blobs and TOS. Please keep adding notes and sketches here on Hackaday. 

Thanks, there are quite a few out there that have done this but for me it is both a learning aid and perhaps a strange looking piece of art.

OMG!!!! :)