Harp Project: Home

The Harp Project

Creating a Conceptually Accessible Computer
Harp Project: Home

Harp Ver. 0.01
harp-0.01.jpg
Once upon a time, about thirty years ago, the microcomputer industry was created and for a long time the home computer industry was fun: the computers were small and uncomplicated.

At that time is was not uncommon for people to pop the top off their computer and do their own maintenance. Some people even made their own peripherals, or hardware modifications to make their computer do unique things.

But, alas, times changed and complexity has crept into personal computers to such an extent that it's practically impossible to do anything to your computer other than upgrade by purchasing a new one or add new store-bought peripherals. Even programming these days requires extrordinary skill and patience, and probably gigabytes of tools.

That may be fine for most people, but I yearn for a simpler time.

Have you ever wanted to build a CPU?
Have you ever wanted to write a macro assembler for your own CPU?
Have you ever wanted to write a BASIC interpreter?
Have you ever wanted to build a computer from logic gates?
Have you ever wondered how interrupts work?
Have you ever wondered how memory mapped I/O works?

If you've answered yes to any of those questions, then this is a website of interest to you. We'll be doing all those things, with the ultimate goal of producing a single board computer using the Digilent Nexys2 1200 demo board.

Step inside and join the fun! We'll redo the beginning of the microcomputer era, with 32-bits at 50MHz instead of 8-bits at 1MHz, and we'll transport ourselves back to a time when the whole computer was conceptually accessible enough for one person to understand.

Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child's coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.

Louis L'Amour