something I`v been thinking about for some years now, what does it mean to have your very own "Computer"? I have to confess that todays machines do little for me, in fact Less than little, they Annoy me most of the time!
it almost seems like the whole idea of a "Computer" has been lost!
instead we have things that Resemble them, but are little more that multi-media platforms, and when you ask someone online a basic arithmetic question they`ll run into another room to grab a calculator?
this isn`t their fault exactly, and not everly one knows that you Can type " 7*8= " into the googlr bar and get 56, but wasn`t it so much nicer when you did:
PRINT 7*8
56
when It did you You told it, and not the other way around?
now I know this is a Blog and not a Rant, but if you Could design your Very Own Computer! wouldn`t you?
I would, and I`d pick all the Best Bits of all the computers that I`d really liked and Use/Incorporate all those "best bits" into it.
now, This is where it gets personal, MY idea of "best bits" may not be yours, Your "Best bits" could be something entirely different, and that to me is Excellent! for a start we`re not all Clones (like todays stuff) we`re not bound by the same rules or even Architecture, some will be Harvard, some Von Neuman, some Transputer, and some a complete Hybrid or totally different!
well, Limited only by what I know now, and what I`m prepared to learn, I`v set about building MY perfect computer, now this computer is Not new to the internet as it`s been published for a few months now, but there has been work done it since, And I`v had help from here sourcing parts and also Unexpected help recently from Element14/Farnell with some 10MHz Z80s and MCUs that I`d never considered using.
there seems to by quite a Drive now to teach our children to Code, and Build, raspberry Pi are making good inroads towards that as have Arduino for some time now, My 6 year old daughter is giving me ideas for neat projects and learning Binary with 74xx logic at the same time, and also seeing how that transports over to Code as a programming language, the Interface between Hardware and Software/Boolean maths.
(quite embarasing to hear that a school teacher has been told that the letters A,B,C,D,E and F are also Numbers!)
from MY standpoint, all these MCUs and FPGAs are great! but we also need to keep the "old" marked as Obsolete chips going! Buy them! and use them!
else we Will lose them, and be forced to replicate them on FPGA MCUs and the like, or Worse, dip our hands in a "Lucky Bag" and order from china and hope for the best.
later I will show my work on My ideal computer (probably in stages), and encourage you to at least Think about what I`v said, and maybe even build your own!
Love and Gods blessing to you each 
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