Making logic gates from transistors
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN people recommend Ben Eater's videos for easy, clear explanations of digital logic and building computers.
What it is
Ben Eater shows how to build logic gates out of transistors, including NOR gates. It is part of his clear hardware-from-scratch teaching style.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2019 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec compiler-guy · 2019-05 · on “Integrated Circuits Can Be Easy to Understand with the Right Teachers”
This video was reasonably good, but still required a lot of background. If you want really terrific easily understood, yet totally in-depth information about integrated circuits, starting from the physics how semi-conductors actually work at the electron level, all the way up through gates and on to an entire computer, Ben Eater's videos are outstanding. Most people know his work from the Breadboard computer, [LINK] , where he builds an actual functioning computer, with instructions and microcode and output, from scratch on a breadboard, along with terrific explanations. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. All his videos are amazing, and super easy to understand. Here is his version of
Recommends z3ugma · 2021-07 · on “Ask HN: Recommend Some Logic Gate Tutorials and Examples?”
Ben Eater’s series on building an 8-bit computer from scratch was very helpful to me in this regard: [LINK] [this video]
Cites somat · 2023-06 · on “Firmware Is Broken Terminology”
The thing that blew my mind was how you can replace discrete transistor logic with memory. While it is sort of obvious in retrospect. I think it an important insight into the nature of computation. Making combinational logic gates from transistors: [this video] Using an EEPROM to replace combinational logic: [LINK]
Cites pixelfarmer · 2023-06 · on “Modern CPUs have a backstage cast”
Something like that? [LINK] or [this video] and there are truckloads more of these. There used to be electronics sets for kids with breadboards (some of them larger scale for easier physical handling then standard breadboards), and they'd had manuals with them explaining all the things. I remember that they also contained descriptions of basic gates like (N)AND, (N)OR, NOT, plus flip flops for storing 1 bit of data.