That intro music is so kickass it makes me wanna throw a tanktop, shorts, headband & sweatbands on and jog to the grocery store

5:00 lets just appreciate the fact that they printed "Blinkenlights" on the PCB.

My first computer was a Vim with a 6502. I had to assemble my code by hand. Counting the displacement for relative branches was always challenging. It makes you appreciate what an assembler and linker does for you.

I love the 8-bit cat designed in monochrome to save system memory!

Now make a computer with vacuum tubes instead of transistors. Im sure that if you filled out the entire state of Texas with them that you could probably run Tetris.

I don't care what anyone says, he does an awesomely clean soldering job. 👍

I used to work with boards like this in arcade machines and 80s-90s pinball machines frequently. Gorf, Missile Command, Asteroids, etc. It made repair easy once you found the problem. Finding the problem could be a problem however. Best deal I ever got was a “dead” Pinbot pinball machine. Had to replace 2 dead transistors I got off another dead board. Got the machine for $200 and cost nothing to repair. Knowledge is power.

4:33 CAT: "Wait moment, I help you."

the music was a high point of this one, for me. I've always loved your intro theme, but the backing tracks did a lot for the experience, this time, too!

I love the montage music as you solder and snip!

The music during the assembly is so nice and relaxing. Love it.

Hi David! I just wanted to say thank you for your channel and the dedication you show to it! I wanted to study CS in college, but after my first year, I was dismayed by how BORING and aloof the department at my school is (and I go to an ivy...). I have learned more in 3 weeks since discovering your channel than I have in 6 months of CS. Keep up the inspiring work!!!

That assembly music is 10/10. 👌

....4:32 inspector cat controls your work! Really a fluffy cute cat! :D

I agree with some comments done: the number of pieces seems high, but considering that these are just BASE circuits in reality is really wonderful how many little pieces they are using!!! And since the step to transistor is little I also think it would be wonderful to see one done with them!

The performance is actually pretty remarkable considering it is only using TTL logic chips.

That first image was a mandrill. And that's a pretty famous image from back in the day to display color capability.

When I was an engineering student, one of the courses involved designing a computer out of what were called bit slicers, basically a computer without a cpu on a chip but rather building a cpu or rather an alu out of multiple chips. Also, it was and still is common in digital electronics courses to build state machines, the early Pioneer and Mariner space probes used state machines instead of computers. In essence, you could make a state machine to perform all the functions of a computer, it's even technically correct to call a computer a state machine. State machines can be made from mere transistors, op-amps, discrete TTL logic gates, from counters or even from eproms. Today people take megabytes and multiple dynamically loaded libraries to write programs that we use to write in just a hundred bytes without a library, we use to call making your own personal library making your own computer language. People just can't do anything without a ton of stuff being done by someone else which they don't even know if they need them.

I love how you take the time to show what you do to solder and clip things in. I have no idea how any of this works so this is really good.

I've built this way ZX Spectrum 48K clone back in 1996 (produced by a local factory in exUSSR). Bought all bits and pieces on the open-air market. It was a lot of fun.

That Monster 6502 looks really sweet!

I think I just found a High School graduation present for my daughter. She's planning on studying EE in college and this would be a step up from the mostly simple electronics kits she's assembled and played with so far.

One of the reasons I enjoy your channel so much is how approachable you make all the items you discuss. You take great care to show detail in assembly or cleaning; you always give a tip for the beginner during the project and never come off as haughty; you clearly put a lot of effort into editing B-roll and close-ups.

I love your videos. I stumbled upon your channel looking for good info on CPU technology, can't stop watching. I kick myself for giving up all the Commodore stuff I use to have!

It’s so relaxing to watch you assemble stuff.

That opening piece of music is, in a word, perfect.

This assembly it's soo relaxing, I love this king of video, congrats.

When in school, (1980) we were taught that TTL logic switching was very fast. I often wondered if anyone ever attempted to bulid a working computer out of only TTL chips...This a a good example and I didn't know these kits were available. Nice little project there, congratulations on completing it successfully.

Love the tense music on initial power up

The pictures shown in the picture view application are all famous computer pictures, for example the parrot is used in wikipedia's article about color palettes en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_color_palettes

4:32 Kitty! So cute. I love the idea behind this computer. Very cool indeed. I bought a Sinclair Z80 replica kit that I want to assemble first.

Why do I have the urge to get some bread board and some electronics and experiment to my heart’s content.

I like the Blinkenlights label.

It was lucky that you were able to get it Cat Scanned so early in the assembly process ;) .

Always fascinated with these 'computer on a board' proto-type thangs. Thanks for presenting this!

learning about how transistors and stuff like that work in my electronics class was so much fun and i cant wait to do more this year

A little tip for anyone soldering ICs: First solder every other pin and then come back and solder the rest. Old ICs are extremely sensitive to heat (and modern ICs aren't indestructible either) and this helps spread the heat, limiting the chance of damaging the chip.

They needed to include a programming machine language monitor option just so people can try writing something for it.

You are the Bob Ross of computers.. i don't know anything about most of the things you are talking about, but you seem to make it so easy to understand. I just love it. It's relaxing. You have a smooth voice, always with a hint of humor and joy accompanying you making me really interested in reliving my old ms-dos/c64 days.. Thanks to you a lot!

it's just so satisfying to watch the assembly soldering process..

is it just me, or is there something inherently satisfying about watching a pin being soldered in ?

"I hope that somebody builds my dream computer" And that somebody turned out to be future 8-Bit Guy

Beautiful presentation! And kudos for your selection of 80s wait-muzak track. I trained at an electronics tech school in the early 90s. For the Digital phase, our lab was to build a 10-byte SRAM arithmetic logic unit. Just 10 LSI chips, a bank of 8 lever switches, 8 LEDs for the binary count, and single digital number display. Don't recall its clock speed, but it would heat up fast!

Not sure if David looks at his comments on his older videos, but I really love his videos. He's really gives out good detailed information on this restoration videos on how all the nooks and crannies works. I've never grew up with old Tech like this, since being a 90s kid, but I do remember my old Windows 95 machine.

I'm guessing the point of purchasing this would be simply for the enjoyment of building it.

I don't know why, but the left page at 1:49 looks like it was just loading when the piece of paper there fell down

4:34 Inspection cat inspects your work.

this is very cool....... thanks for the long hours of editing and late night dead lines..... i hope you feel accomplishment and value in your work because i am enjoying it...

5:00 damn the Blinkenlights joke lives on

Wish I would’ve talked to my grandpa more about computers. He helped build the first one

Racer!!?? Oh man!!! That just gave me some serious shivers on the retro spine!! I remember playing a game with excatly that background imagery, sound, look and feel on my Commodore C116 back when I was a little kid in the 80's!!!! Only that the car was red. there were some other opponents and it was called something else but racer. And I loved the 80's style montage sequence in your video!

Damn man...I know quite a bit about this stuff. I built my first PC in 1994 cloned 486DX2 for Doo...I mean homework. I worked in the IT industry off and on for years. I build superguns for fun and work on old arcade cabs for fun. The reason I bring all of this up is...your knowledge is astounding. I'm learning new stuff and it's great. I know this video is at least a year old but bravo!

6:30 That's a Mandrill - the most iconic image ever in computer graphics

Breakout is an arcade game developed and published by Atari, Inc. released on May 13, 1976.It was conceptualized by Nolan Bushnell and Steve Bristow, influenced by the 1972 Atari arcade game Pong, and built by Steve Wozniak aided by Steve Jobs.

4:29 snare sound that perfectly coincide with the chip slipping into the socket made my day :)

Amazing, very nice design. And the designer knew his classics by labeling the LEDs "Blinkenlights" at 5:00. Good that there is a transparent cover to avoid gefingerpoken und mittengraben!

Back in there 80's I was an the final testing for Perkin Elmer Computers this is how our computers where made. The processor was on 4 separate 15X30 inch board's with up to 4 more boards of memory, the memory controller and cache had their own boards. The best part is that we could step the clock and follow each bit around the processor. What you call the virtual computer we called the micro code which has the logic to control the hardware. I would love one of these.

The pseudo scan line display makes my heart melt...

This video really brings back a lot of memories, I remember I used to working on these things in college.

I want to frame that Monster 6502 on my wall. Micros upgraded my whole thinking. It's like a whole new sandbox once it starts to all click in your mind. I can't stop talking about em because they are everywhere and in everything. I love teaching how to use them.

Reminds me of a modern day Heath Kit computer.

Man I'm digging these tunes.

Wow. That must have taken a while to solder. 4:32 Inspector coming to check your work. Very cool project indeed!

Thanks for this channel. You made computing a lot easier to understand.

Your intro music makes me HAPPY

"The first game is Snake. I haven't really figured out the point of the game." [Nokia nerd gasps resound throughout the internets]

I too, love circuitry and motherboards. I have the motherboard from my parent's first computer on a display stand in my room. It even has the original ram and pci modules, as well as the cpu. It has no use anymore, but it looks nice. I'm super proud of it because it was the first computer I ever disassembled.

I've watched a lot of videos and subscribed. So its time to give my opinion: This intro sound is SO COOL! It should have an extended version ;)

Brilliant, Thank you! I think your criticism of the chip count being high is a little unfair. The board is an excellent teaching aid on how microprocessors are designed. Reducing the chip count by using an existing microprocessor (such as the Z80 or 6502) - would in my opinion - defeat the purpose of the kit. I'm amazed that the designers have got so much 'power' in their design. My homemade microprocessor which uses TTL chips, fits on a king-sized bed and has 1K of ram and 8 instructions.

Ah yes!! Das Blinkenlights (5:00)!!! Many a display of electronic apparatus at school open evenings would carry the following sign: "Achtung! Der Machine ist nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengraben. Ist easy snappen der Springenwerk Blowenfusen, und Corkenpoppin mit Spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by die Dumpkofen. Die Rubbernecken Sightseeren keepen die hands in der Pockets. Relaxen und watchen das Blinkenlights."

I've been meaning to design and build a small four- or eight-bit computer from TTL chips ever since I designed (from detailed instructions) a very, very simple 4-bit computer in one of my intro computer science courses. This kit would be going the "easy" way (especially skipping all the design steps), but I am so tempted... Also, that's some top-notch soldering right there!

I loved working on a PDP-8. Even have some of the Flip-Chip circuit cards. Eight opcodes would have crippled the PDP-8. It also had different group operate micro instructions. At DEC in 1969 I worked as a repair technician and one of the PDP-8 options I worked on was a vector graphics adapter called KV8I connected to a Tektronix video display. This system allowed me to play some of the first video games. Much more advanced that "Pong". A lunar landing game with the display showing the LEM, adjustable thrust coming out of the engine. Displays of miles to landing zone, speed, altitude, angle of thrust. You had to adjust angle and apply thrust and steering to land the LEM. Crashing happened often. And as you would try again you would fly over your previous landing attempts and see the crashed spacecraft. When you landed at the landing target, a little guy would climb down the ladder and go into a McDonalds, order a cheeseburger and a Coke, come out and go up ladder and then take off. End of game. Back to work now.

Those graphics are awfully impressive for TTL. Images like those (USC ones) were common to showcase Atart ST, Amiga & Apple IIGS capabilities in the 80's

your an amazing youtuber, keep up the good work ;)

that board makes a good practise i think it was a bit simplyfied but and made to units as chips but seeing it like that its the best way to show this almost perfectly

So relaxing to watch.... Awesome Vid as always... thx

Gigatron has released ROM v3 with tinyBASIC v2 and WozMon, and a PS/2 keyboard adapter for the game controller port. Hopefully this makes the product more interesting to you. You can buy the ROM and adapter on their website.

Really interesting, and affordable - what a great teaching tool. Thanks for sharing. One benefit is no Class 1 Clean Room required, so you can have your cat with you when building. Thanks again.

when i was a kid, i listened to all kinds of 80's music, to the point where i got sick of listening to 80's music because i had heard it so much. hearing an original track with an 80's style in your videos is honestly really refreshing and its genuinely good music!

0:42 about the "creator" S. Jobs I can say that this guy wasn't anything like an engineer, as Wosniak said once Jobs didn't even know that that aluminum is a conductive metal. Jobs was a good designer with very aggressive business behavior who also was famous for his bad attitude towards his employees. The real man behind Apple is Steve Wosniak.

Love the 80's vibes music 🎶!

The computer is great and all but LOOK AT THAT CAT! HE'S SO CUTE!

I was jammin to the music the whole time, damn. Love your style

Superb looking kit a work of art

6:01 Rubber feet as motherboard standoffs.

Thank you for this post. I teach computer architecture to high school kids and this is amazing to teach the first year. So the first comment I'd like to make is... it's great for teaching. The gigatron site has a great video explaining how all this works, out of simple TTL ICs. And the second comment I'd like to leave is... the gigatron site explains everything in great detail. Even the snake game! Finnaly the price is very good. I've been using a board that costs 500$ and it is not as cool as that (it has a microprocessor :P)

Brilliant! Thank you so much, this has been driving me crazy for a while now. Quick, easy, efficient. Why do you make this so hard Microsoft?! Used to be as easy as "deltree" in DOS.

It's so pretty, I love the case and the Famicom controller of course

I still have my Sinclair ZX-81 with 8K of memory instead of Gigatrons massive 32K. Great to learn new skills for what is more than a state machine but less then a general purpose computer. The loader and an EEPROM would open the door to the next step.

There's something utterly satisfying about watching you assemble a computer. Let's work on a compiler for mainstream languages to the Gigatron machine language!

This put me in mind of Ben Eater's breadboard computer project. The cute thing about the breadboard computer is that once you understand how it works, it's not very hard to expand it, both in memory capacity and in number and type of instructions.

Great review of an interesting project, thanks.

My dream homebrew computer would be a small, portable MS-DOS gaming machine with an Intel Quark (a very low power embedded CPU based on the Pentium P54C).

that music is so 80s!!

Wouldn't have thought I'd be interested in this content, but this was a very well made and interesting video

This whole video and the music gave me such an 80’s feeling. It’s nice

The original Wang 2200 minicomputer was entirely TTL-logic-chip based, and was released in 1973, a couple of years after Intel started making microprocessors. I guess it took a few years for the concept of a microprocessor to catch on with computer manufacturers.

I love the music!

The Z3 consisted of a relay floating point arithmetic unit (600 relays) for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square root, decimal-dual and dual-decimal conversion. The calculator has two registers R1 and R2. A relay memory (1400 relays) with a memory capacity of 64 words, each 22 bits (1 sign bit, 7 bits exponent, 14 bits mantissa) a punched tape reader for film strips to read programs (not but data) 30,000 cables, a keyboard with a lamp field for input and output of numbers and manual control of calculations. The calculator looked like a wall unit and filled an entire room. It weighed about a metric ton.

Thank you so much for this video !