Anybody ever made their own computer from scratch, quite literally? With RAM prices going up and up, I've been considering figuring out how they're made. I'm not sure how feasible it is to make silicon in a shed though. I would like to know anyone else's experience.
>>108343716Yeah I built my own quantum computerPosting from it right now
If you can get your hands on an EUV machine, let me know.
>>108343721FPS in crisis?
>>108343716http://www.youtube.com/@SamZeloof
>>108343716Nigger, making computer require some voodoo shit in the lab
>>108343734>last upload 4 years agoIntel got him....
>>108343739Actually, it was Jim Keller.https://atomicsemi.com/about/
>>108343716I guess it would be feasible to build completely from scratch and avoiding using off the shelf parts, something like an Altair or an Apple 1.It would probably be huge, consume huge amounts of electricity and be able to heat your entire home in winterAnything more sophisticated than that, no one ever managed to build without using suppliers/B2B partners
>>108343734>>108344193Even Sam used commercial semiconductor industry chemicals. If you can get research chemicals you can probably get the manufactured chips themselves.
>>108343734>>108344214It’s worth noting a key ingredient here is to be born to a rich family.
>>108344227Surely you can recoup the electron microscope investment by selling your 10 genuine home made Intel 4004 replicas.
youre not going to be able to make your own ram thats compatible with your pc or anything, but theres plenty of people whove made custom silicon. most of what theyre making is poc stuff for lithography and chemical processes, and a few have managed to make functional transistors in their garages. i dont think anyones made anything more complex that, say, a 555 of something at home. theres even services like wafer.space that buy fab slots and sell space in them, so you can design your own silicon and get it fabbed in a real facility.
>>108344237Yeah but where does that investment come from in the first place when you’re young? Not saying Sam isn’t very talented, and it was very cool what he did, but that’s something that’s not accessible to just any old smart person, you need to be from a wealthy family to set up a home lab like that. Especially since you’re going to fail a lot when you start out.
>>108343723One of the best books I have read in the last year.
>>108344465Home fab is the (distant) future. But as the very first step we have to find a way to do it at an affordable price.The only reason it is so inaccessible is the pricetag. If more people were dabbling in it, they would quickly find a way to reduce the cost.And of course the first chips will be barely any better than a potato, but if this becomes a more widespread hobby it will gradually improve to the point where you might have something to stick into your PC. But realistically we are talking decades at a minimum here.
I made my own PC monitor once but I did work for Samsung at the time.
>>108343716You can't make x86 CPUs, the architecture is patented
>>108348401>I've been considering figuring out how they're made.Dude, you just need like 2 billion dollars to build a semiconductor facility, and a wafer factory of course.
>>1083484715 billions.
>>108343716I watched a pcb diy vid once and was disapointed that all it did was print wire tracing on a board... like lmao I could just put actual wires instead.I think the first step to doing what OP wants is to set the bar very low. Like not even intel 8008, even lower, probably only a few hundred bits of memory. Everything is wires and big homemade transistors. And the screen is just 20x20 leds. Inputs will be 3-4 buttons. Should take about half a year.
>>108343716It would cost you billions to get to a point where you can make DDR5 RAM. You are delusional.>>108348583>a few hundred bits of memoryIt's probably going to cost OP hundreds of thousands in used equipment before he can even make a single transistor, let alone a proper IC.
>>108343716>DIY fabProjectsInFlight is doing a series on DIY chip fab on YouTube.>DIY computer There's a channel called JDH who made a DIY breadboard computer. Far from the first but somewhat interesting. Ben Eater is also a popular channel that does this stuff. There's also a project called "Big mess of wires" where someone hosted a website on a DIY breadboard computer.
>>108343716I just found thishttps://docs.hackerfab.org/home/Interestingly, this community project was inspired by >>108343734
>>108343716Ultra unemployed activities
>>108343716>>108343734>>108350969I found this the other dayhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfSO-LCKmrAGuy made a fab cleanroom out of his backyard shed.
>>108351444I wonder how much it cost him in total. Probably steep, but this proves beyond any doubt that DIY fab is entirely doable.