[drzaiusx11]

I took several classes along these lines in college; one writing a rudimentary OS on bare metal 68k asm, wiring up peripherals on breadboards, etc. Creating an ALU using only 74 series logic chips and the like. This was 30y ago, but the 1970s chips were already antiques, but the lessons were timeless. I'm happy courses like this still exist and I wish everyone had an opportunity to take them as part of standard computer science curriculum. For me at least, they fundamentally shaped my perspective of computing machinery that I never would have experienced otherwise.

Today I program 6502/7 asm for my Atari to help me unwind and it grounds me and gives me joy, while in my day job I'm easily 10 levels of abstractions higher.

[ggerules]

Programming in an assembly language is a very zenith like experience for me.

[drzaiusx11]

I love having a relationship with the lowest levels of our craft. Access to an electron microscope and decapping chips to make my own reimplementions (in software) is next on my bucket list. If chip lithograph wasn't so prohibitively expensive I'd also try my hand at that...

[AlotOfReading]

If you have a couple hundred dollars, you can get a chip made through tiny tapeout [0].

[0] https://tinytapeout.com/

[drzaiusx11]

Very cool! I meant more hands on diy fab, like how I make my own pcbs. It seems farming out my designs to be produced (hdl->chip) at reasonable one-off costs is a plausible avenue now, which is exciting as well. I've probably been exposed to too many toxic chemicals already anyways and should readjust my bucketlist plans...