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A project log for One-instruction TTL Computer

A breadboard-able computer which uses only a single instruction - MOVE

justin-davisJustin Davis 11/06/2017 at 13:510 Comments

I put some time into seeing if I could get away with not putting current-limiting resistors on my LEDs, and I realized I could not.  My hope is I will get everything right with this board the first time, so I need to play it safe.  It makes my design look not quite as good, but that's ok.  I originally was going to use some surface mount resistors on the bottom side of the board to keep everything looking clean, but that's a lot of annoying soldering.  So I switched to a few resistor arrays.  

They block some of the silkscreen, but it's not too bad.  I'll be looking down on it from directly overhead, and I'll know what it says.  I also labelled each important TTL chip just to make it look a little better and it may help with debugging.  I'm still considering putting more LEDs on here - maybe one for each chip when it's enabled.

My inspiration for a good-looking board is the transistor-level 6502 project:  https://monster6502.com/

Mine will not be as good as this one, but it shows how much pleasant aesthetics can do.

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