Long time readers of this blog will know that when I’m not shilling for the Go language, my hobbies include electronics and retro computing. For me, projects like James Newman’s Megaprocessor, a computer built entirely from discrete components, is about as good as it gets.

James has recently finished construction of the Megaprocessor and has started to document it on YouTube, you should totally check it out. But this post isn’t about the Megaprocessor.

When I subscribed to the Megaprocessor channel on YouTube I discovered James has produced another series of videos focused on the fundamentals of implementing digital logic with transistors. In the three videos embedded below, James lays out the foundations of digital logic.

The first video describes (in James’ wonderfully understated manner) the operation of the simplest digital logic circuit; a voltage controlled inverter built with one transistor¹.

In the second video, James adds a second transistor in series with the first and demonstrates the implementation of the NAND (Not AND) function².

In the third video, by reorganising the transistors in parallel, James shows the circuit now implements the logical NOR (Not OR) function.

… and that’s it. There are more videos in James’ Stepping Stones video series, but with these three operations, NOT (inversion), NAND, and NOR, any combination of digital logic of any size can be created, as the Megaprocessor shows³.

Why is this important?

The circuits described in this set of videos feature far fewer transistors than you would find in real processor, but they are not simplified. The circuits described in this video were used in mainframe computers in the 1960’s and formed the basis for the integrated microprocessors of the 1970’s.

In these three videos James describes the entire foundation for contemporary computation. No matter how many layers of operating systems, networks, and source code abstraction you build on top, the fundamentals of computation and digital logic remain as simple as these three videos.

Notes and further reading

If you’re interested in learning more, here are a few suggestions for your own research.

1. If you have no background in electronics a simple analogy for the relationships between voltage, current, and resistance is water flowing through a pipe. In this analogy, voltage represents water pressure, pushing water through the pipe. Current is the water itself. The volume of water in the pipe is a property of both the diameter of the pipe, and any resistance which may cause segments of the pipe to be less than full. Resistance, the final property, is any constriction or obstruction of the pipe. The higher the resistance, the more the pipe is constricted, reducing the amount of water (current) flowing through it.
2. James’ tutorials use discrete TTL logic. TTL stands for Transistor to Transistor Logic, introduced in the early 1960’s by Sylvania (yes, the lightbulb makers). Before TTL there were at least two other forms of digital logic, what were they, and why did they succumb to TTL?
3. James’ tutorials, and the Megaprocessor itself, use NPN transistors. If the Megaprocessor was shrunk down to a single integrated circuit it would most likely be implemented using NMOS logic. NMOS was very popular in the 70’s and early 80’s but has since given way to CMOS logic. What are the differences between NMOS and CMOS and why would James have chosen NMOS to implement the Megaprocessor?