Big Mess of Wires

A hand-built, 8-bit CPU
A hand-built, 8-bit CPU

I’ll be taking my son to the Maker Faire for the third year in a row this weekend. It’s a great Father & Son festival where you see what happens when you throw together technology, imagination, dedication, and passion into a big pot and mix it up together.

On display will be Steve Chamberlin’s hand-built CPU which he built in 18 months using $1000 worth of parts and 1,200 pieces of wire hand-wrapped around gold wrap posts mounted to a board that he bought off of eBay. In the end, he re-created a large version of something the equivalent of the Apple II CPU. He nicknamed it, Big Mess of Wires. Full details on Steve’s blog.

I look forward to seeing Steve’s homebrewed CPU along with many other pet projects that are sure to inspire.

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2 responses to “Big Mess of Wires”

  1. Manny Avatar

    That was shown there? Awesome! I read about it not to long ago, very cool.

  2. iankennedy Avatar

    With everything we saw there we never got around to finding the computer. You should take your son next year, he'll enjoy it.

    Photos from our visit:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/clankennedy/sets/7

    And a video of the life-sized Mousetrap:


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