This project is a 100% work in progress. The information available will be updated as I find out how to do things and implement them.
GADES-I is a project I’ve had in mind for some years. Everything started some years ago when I saw some videos on YouTube from a guy called Ben Eater. His 8-bit breadboard computer project caught my attention.
I am a computer engineer, and I have been working in IT throughout my professional life, but always with the software layer of systems. Sure, I have administered server rooms in the past and built all my home computers over the years from components I have chosen, but I’ve never worked with designing hardware or with electronics.
My knowledge of electronics is basic. I took an introductory course, FYS1210, at the Department of Physics at the University of Oslo a couple of years ago, and this course opened many new doors and paths for me to explore.
It is fascinating to see that computers and electronics today are just a set of components with the sole purpose of controlling the flow of electrons between them. It has been the same since the beginning; the only difference today is that we have more components in less space, so we have more speed and more power to process data. But in the end, we still use transistors, resistors, capacitors, and diodes to control the electric current traveling through them, so we can implement the logic needed to run these systems.
With this project, we are going back to basics. I’ll be using basic logic gates and common integrated circuits to build the system one piece at a time. It draws inspiration from 1980s computers and focuses on the fundamentals: the ALU, control unit, registers, memory, and the connections that make them work together.
I will try to implement a simplified version of the RISC-V RV32I (Base Integer) instruction set standard in this project. But I will have to take some shortcuts and simplify some parts to avoid the complexity of wiring such a system on breadboards.
I will be documenting the entire process so others can reuse this experience if they wish to do so. Wish me luck!
The name of the project, GADES, comes from the ancient name of the city where I grew up.
