The Breadboard 8-bit CPU and Computer
Be sure to check out the YouTube channel for more in-depth explanations of how the ByteFrost works!
ByteFrost under development
In this Github repository are software tools for using the ByteFrost computer:
Assembler program that converts Assembly code to ByteFrost machine language.
Note: The Assembler/ directory contains the deprecated assembler;
Assembler V2/ contains the new assembler, which also has new preprocessing
features, assembly instructions that can be translated to multiple ISA
instructions, and support for the new 16-bit memory address space expansion.
Arduino code for the ByteFrost's display card (an Arduino Nano) for a 2004A LCD display.
Arduino code for the ByteFrost's disk controller (an Arduino MKR Zero) for a micro SD card that serves as the ByteFrost's disk.
Also included is software for handling ByteFrost disk files using the ByteFrost FileSystem (BFSv1), a very rudimentary filesystem with one root directory.
Documentation for the ByteFrost computer. Includes hardware documentation (i.e. schematics) and software documentation (instruction set specifications, control signal lists, each instruction's micro-code and structure, and assembly syntax). For more documentation, see the wiki.
Arduino code for programming the three microcode EEPROMs (using Ben Eater's EEPROM programmer as a basis).
Programs written in ByteFrost assembly that can be compiled using the assembler and run on the ByteFrost computer. Each program comes with the assembly code (.asm file), machine language compilation (.mlg file), and a binary file (.bin file).
The ByteFrost is a 2-person father-son project (by Gil and Ron Keidar) that we have been working on on-and-off (mostly during vacation between university quarters) for a few years (since March 2022).
My (Gil's) idea behind creating the ByteFrost was to work on a project that covers many abstraction layers in computer science (all of the way from the discrete logic layer to the application layer) and to, in the process, learn about and get hands-on experience with those layers.