r/AskElectronics • u/BrilliantLeather1379 • 1d ago

Software that allows to build 8bit computer?

Heya

I would like to build an 8 bit computer but simulate everything in a computer program.

I've found these 2 but I'm not sure how far I would be able to go?

https://www.tinkercad.com/
https://www.falstad.com/circuit/

Would the turing complete game sandbox allow me to do this?

Thanks!

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u/nixiebunny 20h ago

Tinkercad and Falstad might get unwieldy with that much logic. Are you considering simulating the beneater 6502 CPU? If so, you should check with that community to see if they have resources. 

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u/arewemartiansyet 14h ago

The Turing Complete game you mentioned is really cool and fun but it is a logic, not electronics game. You will be building logic circuits that do not take things like propagation delay into account. It is still an excellent game to gain fundamental understanding of how a CPU works but it is not suitable to simulate a design you could actually build with existing chips (e.g. the 74 series of ICs). If you don't plan on building a physical PCB it might still be your best bet since the simulation is actually fast enough to do some fun stuff with it (a game in a game).

Logism (Evolution) is probably your best bet for something that could actually work in the real world. But from personal experience it can be a real pain with its 90's approach to software and I'd recommend frequent backups and don't update it/change operating systems. It really likes to shift circuits around and break existing wiring. I've also found no good way to translate the design into a PCB (other than manually doing it and typically making a mistake somewhere), but of course that doesn't matter if you only want to simulate the CPU.