The Intel 4004

[DavidP]

Well, this thread was ultimately spawned by the "super language" thread.

Here is the throught process that brought it around:

"super language" -> assembly -> wikipedia: assembly -> programs written in assembly -> cp/m -> msdos -> x86 -> 8086 -> 4004

That is one long thought process....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004

Anyways, so I checked out the Intel 4004 on Wikipedia. I thought it was really cool because now after taking a couple college digital design classes I understand everything that is going on in that thing...not only that...we are designing a more complicated architecture in our digital design class right now than that.

4 bits! barely more than 700 kHZ in clock speed!

That is so cool...I love antique computer stuff....

[Frobozz]

Yeah same here. Shame you can't dig up the internal schematics to the 4004. I think that'd be interesting to look over. Maybe even put the schematics into a digital electronics simulator and play around with it.

[DavidP]

oh i did. that was easy to find actually. just go to the external links of that wikipedia page and there are all sorts of resources about the 4004 including a simulator and all the internal schematics, down to the transistor level.

[VirtualAce]

My first processor was the 8088 which was a descendant of the 4004. When you divide it all up the chips are not that complex...in theory.