James Newman’s “Megaprocessor” is a giant “microprocessor” built on transistors and other discrete components that he soldered onto boards and wired together in frames that stand 2m high and run 10m long.
Newman built the machine so that he could get his head around the idea of what’s actually going on inside a computer, by blowing it up to something so big he could walk around inside it while it was computing.
You can download an emulator for the Megaprocessor and write software for it. He’s ported Tetris to it and uses it as a demo app; he hopes to donate the computer to an educational institution or museum some day. He’s planning to open up his home to visitors who want to see it and experiment with it.
James Newman started work on the “Megaprocessor”, which is 33ft (10m) wide and 6ft (2m) high, in 2012.
It does the job of a chip-sized microprocessor and Mr Newman has spent £40,000 ($53,000) creating it.
It contains 40,000 transistors, 10,000 LED lights and it weighs around half a tonne (500kg). So far, he has used it to play the classic video game Tetris.
The Megaprocessor [James Newman]
Huge home-built computer used for Tetris
[Zoe Kleinman/BBC]
(via /.)