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Controler design.

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Velvet Leopard

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Hewwo. First I want to say the the leopard loves this forum and plans on using it regularly to learn and share. I just needed to know if there were any resources on the internal structures ( i.e. circuit diagrams and component layouts) of various controlers out there. I want to go through the daunting and seemingly unnessecary task of building controlers from basic components. I know it is cheaper and saner to just buy a controler, but I want to do this to learn more for myself. I like to fool with basic circuitry and improve on my own junk. Please help me if you can.
 
Velvet Leopard said:
Hewwo. First I want to say the the leopard loves this forum and plans on using it regularly to learn and share. I just needed to know if there were any resources on the internal structures ( i.e. circuit diagrams and component layouts) of various controlers out there. I want to go through the daunting and seemingly unnessecary task of building controlers from basic components. I know it is cheaper and saner to just buy a controler, but I want to do this to learn more for myself. I like to fool with basic circuitry and improve on my own junk. Please help me if you can.

It rather depends on what you mean by a 'controller', if you simply mean a board with a micro-controller on board there are loads of different designs out on the web. But depending what you want, just design your own - the only difference between different boards is really just the provided interfaces, make your own with what you need - not what is provided on a general purpose board.
 
I see what you mean, but........

I see what you mean, but I literally meant I want to know the internal structure of a microcontroller such as the PIC16F84-04/p for example. I want to fool around with those things and make my own smaller versions maybe.
 
Re: I see what you mean, but........

Velvet Leopard said:
I see what you mean, but I literally meant I want to know the internal structure of a microcontroller such as the PIC16F84-04/p for example. I want to fool around with those things and make my own smaller versions maybe.

Right, so you want to build a computer from basic principles!.

I think you will be astonished at how much circuitry you require to even partially emulate a simple device like a PIC. You may be able to find information on such subjects on the web - but it's certainly not a subject to get answers to in a forum!. You will certainly be talking in hundreds (if not thousands) of transistors.

The first ever computer, built at Manchester, took up entire rooms, a PIC 16F84 has considerably more power!.
 
If you want to make your own microcontroller you should use an FPGA. FPGAs are ICs that let you program in your own logic (gates, flipflops etc.). This way you can design, test, and run your own computer without the days of soldering and inevitable painful revisions to your circuit.

Xilinx has free design tools and development boards are fairly cheap. The Spartan 2E line is well priced and has enough resources for just about any controller you'd want.

Brent
 
Micro-controller

If you want to learn and implement with FPGAs, you might also want to learn VHDL (a hardware description language).

You can find VHDL descriptions of various micro-controllers all over the web including https://www.opencores.org/projects/.

Good luck
 
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