For my programming project I am making a 1-bit ALU using only NOTs, and AND and OR gates. I was a bit unsure how to represent this in a webpage, but here's my attempt. Many thanks to the folks at the local Radio Shack for helping me assemble this thing out of a hanful of CMOS chips and a bunch of wires.

There are actually a couple of schematics in here, some I created using Digital Simulator 1.1 which helped me out a lot. I also scanned in my hand-drawn schematic, which I used to build the circuit itself. This page takes a while to load as it's a bunch of large-ish graphics thrown together.

For those interested, here are two of the schematics with the different parts highlighted and explained.

Take the tour! This is a bunch of photographs following me as I put the actual circuit together. There is a paragraph or two after each one explaining what's going on. It's about 13 pages long, with one picture per page, and lets you see what all the fuss is about!

This entire project has been a lot of fun. I haven't toyed with electronics since some time in middle school, when I did a science project involving one of those "2000 Electric Thingamabobs" kits. I learned a lot, not just about projects specifically (Check your equipment (breadboard, chips, etc.) first!) but also a lot about electricity and electronics in general. I bounced around the internet trying to find out what was wrong with the stupid thing and found all sorts of fascinating diagrams and schematics that I hope to toy around with at some future point, the concept of using my computer's serial port as a source to control circuits is one of the more intriguing examples. Anyhow, if you're looking for a project to take on, and know something about basic electronics (or like to talk to the nice people at Radio Shack), the 1-bit ALU was a lot of fun to design and build, with enough complexity to keep you interested and not too much to make it impossible. If you decide to build one, good luck! Mine doesn't actually work yet, but I'm pretty sure that's becuase of the untested breadboard... Heh, as I said earlier, checking your equipment before you cover it with wires is probably wise. Trust me.