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A project log for WDR-1-Bit-Computer

Recreation of the MC14500-based WDR-1-Bit-Computer

pascalPascal 03/25/2020 at 11:320 Comments

I've been looking for some documentation and data about both the computer and some of the special parts for a while now, and lucky there is a website that seems to provide a lot of scanned data and even pictures, with a second website showing a different-looking version of it.

1: http://wdr-1-bit-computer.talentraspel.de/
2: https://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=834 and
3: https://www.old-computers.com/museum/photos.asp?t=1&c=834&st=1

The training computer on the pictures from the old-computers website shows quite a some differences compared to the scanned documents and pictures on the wdr-1-bit-computer website. I assume that one computer was built according to the WDR instructions, while the other might have been built like it is printed on the cqDL Magazine.

It seems like the cqDL (lower schematic picture) version seems to have some additional features compared to the more lightweight WDR version, but it also looks like that both versions are software compatible to eachother. The idea of manually setable program address and to have another I/O-select-Address compared to the WDR version definitely will be integrated into my version, if not further expanded.

Both magazines provide excellent documentation and will be used as references. The WDR Magazine seems to be more a guide, teaching the very basics as well, but also shows many possible expansion modules and their features, while the cqDL Magazine prints it more compact.

Now the next step for me is to see which components are still available, where I can get them and which components I can replace with newer ones. I can imagine the biggest issue will be the 1-bit CPU MC14500 itself, but luckly I got 5 of them from ebay. But if I ever decide to turn this into a full kit, I gotta think of an alternative.

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