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Comment by Graham24 | Hacker News Reader

This is what I'd like to build. A CPU from parts. I'll start when I win the lottery.

The cost of the Megaprocessor is documented here: http://www.megaprocessor.com/Cost_Materials.html

The Megaprocessor uses through hole components. Something similar using surface mount components could be substantially cheaper, mostly because it could be smaller. This means it will need less of all the expensive supporting parts. The components themselves are only a small part of the cost.

You're right; still costs $1-5k though: http://monster6502.com/

Neat project. Nice quote from that page:

"How big would a modern CPU be at this scale? The Apple A8X, found in the iPad Air 2, contains about 3 billion transistors. (This is comparable to the number of transistors in modern desktop computer CPUs as well.) At the scale of the MOnSter 6502, that would take about 885,000 square feet (82000 square meters) — an area about 940 ft (286 m) square."

Nice. This also reflects my experience that the connectors often are the most expensive electronic parts :)

Individual SMT parts are cheaper part-by-part, on average too.

But fault diagnosis and repair would be more complex.

Just build it on an FPGA.

Follows the same logic, but much cheaper.

People feel the need to rationalize with some vague "educate the public" business but its really a piece of performance art by people skilled in the EE and CS arts. So in that way you're telling the artist to use a different medium and that usually holds roughly zero interest for the artist. If the artist wanted to perform "Dueling Banjos" on xylophones that would be cool and they surely could have done so, but they didn't want to.

A good programming analogy is people confusing the purpose of a programming Koan collection and helpfully suggesting the participant should google the answers. Or even worse than programming Koans, ditto but for meditation Koans. The point of the experience is to do it your way, by yourself...

Personally I'd like to play with RTL gate logic using modern transistors "in my infinite spare time". There's a certain alternative history component aspect. Imagine if instead of leaky, low beta, low Ft, low breakdown voltage germanium transistors, RTL was implemented with top of the line 2010s discretes. Yeah yeah I know RTL begat DTL begat TTL using contemporary technology, but in alternate history world, how would life have changed?

But no LEDs.

On a computer of that vintage, they're called blinkenlights.

Exactly. They can be installed on a FPGA. Plus, slow as old systems are, one might even be able to build connections to them into individual, logic gates or virtual transistors. Speed difference between FPGA and older hardware might cover performance losses.

And you still get blinkenlights per gate or transistor in emulated design.

There is an active home brew computer / cpu scene that demonstrates how to accomplish this cheaply. No need to spend anywhere near what this megaprocessor costs

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