Awesome project, although I personally can’t identify with putting such effort into reinventing the past instead of making something new.
I suspect different people live in different periods. I’ve known people who always dwell on the past, those who are preoccupied with the future and those who are in the present and not overthink too much in either direction.
A lot can be learned for the present from such projects. Older stuff is usually less integrated, more tolerant to manufacturing by hand (for many reasons, including relatively easy to deal with frequencies, board layout, and required layers), and you have plenty of "reference" implementation and documentation to delve into. It is a very valuable hands-on experience that certainly gives an edge over people who only know how computers are put together theoretically.
This is not crawling by any stretch of imagination. It’s low speed digital which is the only thing making it “easy”, other than that it’s worlds apart in complexity from a reasonable educational or DIY project.
Because it's possible. Bringing up more advanced CPUs alone and with hobbyist tools is borderline impossible. Nothing revolutionary changed (Sorry Pentiums) until the Opteron, so you're covering an entie era by doing this and learning a ton that applies even today.
I dislike the premise of your question though. There's no reason it need to be economically useful. People can just do things thy love and enjoy.
On top of that, this question is like asking why learn finite automata, why not just jump straight to Turing machines and trying to solve P=?NP. No, that's nonsense obviously and you gotta walk before you can run.
The level of expertise in the OP is way above “walking” when translated to EE terms. It’s educational no doubt but so was every one of my professional projects over the years.
Yes I completely agree that people should do what they enjoy - it’s just that every now and then I see this completely amazing undertaking with absolutely no extrinsic value and I wonder. It’s all a very personal vantage point of course.
> The level of expertise in the OP is way above “walking” when translated to EE terms
I know, I've looked into doing it and this is mind-blowing but they're relative terms and it depends on what you compare it to. This is "walking" compared to bringing up a Ryzen machine.
> with absolutely no extrinsic value
Why should it? And how do you know it doesn't and they just haven't documented that?
"Interesting History" is just before your own time (of sentience). I would consider rebuilding 1972 computer a worthy task. But not some 1990 beige box from China.
Why not "some 1990 beige box from China" ? Do you think this is not interesting enough ? An 1972 computer is more mecanically challenging . And finding ICs could also be challenging because some are not produced anymore at least in the west. Finding SW is also a challenge. In the end is a question of mostly time and component availability.
I just threw 1988 turbo-button computer into garbage. I kept in the closet for 30 years, because it was not mine, and I excepted the owner will come any time and collect it. Now he is dead and I do not believe in ghosts.
There's people who are looking for that kind of stuff. If it's not too late, it would be worth posting it for free (or whatever) on your favorite local market.
doing your part. the only reason any vintage computer becomes valuable is that most of them get tossed in the trash. the kids in the year 2076 are going to love turbo buttons. Chinese factories manufacturing parts for American computers, who could imagine!
It was the worst of times. You needed at least 50 Mhz to play MP3-files. Only rich people could afford that. And couple of years later you wanted to play DIVX-files and you needed 300 Mhz.
My recollection doesn't agree with you. It was a stretch for a 300 MHz Celeron to play an MP2 (not even MP3) - I was an early adopter as I hated all the analog degrading.
I suspect different people live in different periods. I’ve known people who always dwell on the past, those who are preoccupied with the future and those who are in the present and not overthink too much in either direction.