Game developer Steve Chamberlin live in California and became world famous over night. Not because a revolutionizing game or even something new at all, in fact it is a side project with little use, borderlining between technology and art. Steve Chamberlin has been working on his BMOW (Big Mess O’ Wires) project for a year and a half since the start in November 2007 and the name really says it all.
On his own, Chamberlin built an 8-bit CPU from scratch using simple logic circuits. The build itself is not as complex, from a purely technical standpoint, as you might think, which was kind of the whole idea too, but that has just made the whole thing even more interesting.
“Big Mess o’ Wires 1 is an original CPU design. It does not use any commercial CPU, but instead has a custom CPU constructed from dozens of simple logic chips. Around this foundation is built a full computer with support for a keyboard, sound, video, and external peripherals.”
Chamberlin has built a complete computer by pairing his 2MHz processor with 512KB RAM, 512KB ROM and a video output showing two colors at 512×480 pixel resolution. Or 256 colors at 128×240 pixels.
What makes the whole thing so very interesting is that it consists of a whole lot of wires, 1250 to be exact, requiring 2500 twists to attach, all made by hand.
The entire project is documented at Steve Chamberlin’s website and shows that pretty much anything is possible if you’re stubborn enough and carry a certain amount of know-how.
