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Gates & ring oscillator speed tests

A project log for 8 bit transistor computer

An 8 bit computer made of discrete components built on wood and nails.

yagoYago 05/02/2022 at 09:360 Comments

The design I'm using is based around LTL logic by Tim. It has the following circuit diagram:

The noise marging should be quite good due to the difference in forward voltage between the input diodes and the led. As for speed, I've built the following 5 stage ring oscillator:

I don't own a oscilloscope (too expensive for my budget...), so I used an Arduino with the amazing freqcount library. The entire oscillator produced around 4 MHz when testing 2n2222a transistors, which is around 20 MHz per gate and 5 MHz when testing the BC547C, which is 25MHz per gate. Other people have recommended me using the 2n3904 but I don't have access to them right now. I will probably use the BC547. It is worth noting that the capacitors add a big speed improvement.

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