If you’re one of the thousands of kids graduating from a U.S. high school this year, your thoughts are probably turning toward college, but one guy has been spending his senior year building his own 8-bit computer.
Jake Eisenmann has built his machine, the Duo Adept, in his spare time over the past year. And by designing, I mean actually fabricating the processors and all of the circuitry himself instead of just soldering some off-the-shelf chips onto a circuit board. When you look at how complicated the board design looks, with all the wires soldered together, you wonder how anyone could be able to pull this off.
The screen is a standard fat CRT, though not quite retro. It does recall the days when most computer monitors for 8-bit machines were TVs, since “real” monitors tended to be quite expensive in the ’80s, especially color monitors. He used an old keyboard for input, and used a plastic tub for the case.
He designed his own graphics hardware, processor, and operating system for the project. Eisenmann even created some games, including a clone of the game Lode Runner where you have to collect muffins, and much more importantly, a Pong game. Every 8-bit computer needs a pong game. The design is pretty crude, but since he built the computer himself from scratch, and especially at his young age (he’s just graduated from high school), this is quite a stunning accomplishment.
If Jake Eisenmann doesn’t have a college scholarship already, he’s more than earned it by designing and building one of the most awesome homebrew computer designs of all time completely by himself. I wonder what he’ll be able to pull off in the future.
For more 8-bit fun, check out the Playable 8-bit Violin, The 8-Bit Tie, and 8-bit Lego and Nintendo Stop Motion.
Via: Digital Trends
