Building a computer on a breadboard is a seminal project for many builders, but it can become complicated quite quickly, not to mention that all the parts needed for a computer are being placed on a medium which often lends itself to loose wires and other hardware bugs. [3DSage] has a working breadboard computer that […]
[Kalesh Sasidharan] from Sciotronics wrote in to tell us about their project, Stamp: a modular set of template breakout boards designed to make prototyping with SMD components faster, easier, and more affordable. No breadboards, custom PCBs, or tangled jumper wires required. The project has blasted past its Kickstarter goal, and is on track to start […]
At this point, many of us have gone all-in on USB-C. It’s gotten to the point that when you occasionally run across a gadget that doesn’t support being powered USB-C, the whole experience seems somewhat ridiculous. If 90% of your devices using the same power supply, that last 10% starts feeling very antiquated. So why […]
When are jumper wires on a breadboard entirely optional? When it’s the latest version of [Kevin Santo Cappuccio]’s Jumperless, which uses a bunch of analog crosspoint switches (typically used for handling things like video signals) to create connections instead of physical wires. There’s even an RGB LED under each hole capable of real-time visualization of […]
The printed breadboard cover as seen from the bottom. (Credit: CHEP, YouTube) Does it make sense to make your own breadboards rather than purchasing off the shelf ones? As [Chuck Hellebuyck] notes in a recent video on DIY, 3D-printed breadboards, there’s a certain charm to making a breadboard exactly the size you need, which is […]
[Ben Eater] is back with the second part of his video series on building a simple video card that can output 200×600 pixels to a display with nothing but a VGA connection, a handful of 74-logic chips and a 10 MHz crystal. In this installment we see how he uses nothing but an EEPROM and […]
Digital Equipment Corp.’s PDP-11 is one of the most important computers in history. It’s the home of Unix, although that’s arguable, and it’s still being used in every application, from handling nuclear control rods to selling Ed Sheeran tickets on Ticketmaster. As the timeline of PDP-11 machines progressed, the hardware did as well, and by […]
One of the joys of electronics as a hobby is how easy it is to get parts. Literally millions of parts are available from thousands of suppliers and hundreds of distributors, and everyone competes with each other to make it as easy as possible to put together an order from a BoM. If you need […]
[Ben Eater] has been working on building computers on breadboards for a while now, alongside doing a few tutorials and guides as YouTube videos. A few enterprising hackers have already duplicated [Ben]’s efforts, but so far all of these builds are just a bunch of LEDs and switches. The next frontier is a video card, but […]
You’d be hard pressed to find a carpenter who didn’t own a hammer, or a painter that didn’t have a couple of brushes kicking around. Some tools are simply so fundamental to their respective craft that their ownership is essentially a given. The same could be said of the breadboard: if you’re working with electronics […]