Thank you. Diode ROMs are cool. You can see the bits! I particularly like the aesthetics of this one:

https://www.cca.org/blog/20120222-Diode-Matrix.shtml

Not sure yet. I’ll post about it when I get to that part. 😁

I got it as a kit from Digicool Things. Soldering and assembly by me, but the design is theirs.

They’re 22awg solid. Most of them are from Jameco and have PVC insulation. The bright green and dark blue wires are from Ben Eater’s World’s Worst Video Card kit, and have what feels like silicone insulation.

It’s not too difficult to learn. Ben Eater is really good at teaching this stuff. He guides you through everything in small steps that are easy to understand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnzuMJLZRdU

Thank you. I’ve got the PCB design and assembly instructions here if you want to make your own: https://codeberg.org/interrupt_tv/alpz-bb

Not sure exactly how long it took. I worked on it off and on over the span of a few days.

Definitely a great resource. I’ve got it bookmarked to read more of later. From the address decoding chapter, I can now better appreciate Ben’s weird memory layout that leaves half of the RAM inaccessible. It allows you to hook up a ton of peripherals and use the individual address lines to select them. You can even select multiple devices to write to simultaneously, depending on which part of the address space you access.

Thank you. I agree, it is a really impressive piece of software.

I went with JLCPCB. Cost about $5 for the 5 boards with shipping, which took two weeks. I just added some additional instructions to the readme about getting the boards manufactured. The process seemed daunting before I did it, but it turned out to be really easy.