[etoys-dev] Toy computers

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr.]

Karl Ramberg wrote on Sun, 9 Oct 2011 18:16:09 +0200
> And a bunch of CPU simulators:
> 
> http://maven.smith.edu/~thiebaut/classes/364/simulators/

And on Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 6:09 PM,:
> > Here is a circuit simulator made in java. More advanced than the one in Etoys
> >
> > http://www.falstad.com/circuit/

And on Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 6:27 PM:
> >> I have not tested this game, but it seems pretty cool.
> >> Simulates chemistry, but it could just as well be a cpu.
> >> http://spacechemthegame.com/

These are all very good suggestions, thanks! I had seen the Java circuit
simulator and it is a good example of what I said: it will let you
understand the basics in detail but then you move on to one of the other
tools for larger designs. For a computer architecture course I helped
with in the first half of this year, we used the WinMIPS64 simulator,
which is a modification of the WinDLX tool. There is a Java version of
WinMIPS64, but it is less complete.

One tool that is interesting because it is written in Smalltalk
(VisualWorks) is IDaSS

http://averschu.home.xs4all.nl/idass/

Some variation of this integrated with Etoys would be very interesting
for me.

What I have been using the most, however, is TkGate. This tool is
written in Tcl and C and the projects can use a mix of schematics and
Verilog. It is very interactive, which makes it good for both
development and education.

http://www.tkgate.org/

One of the examples is an 8 bit processor running the animal guessing
game on a simulated terminal. There is a tool which helps generate
binaries from assembly and microcode assembly source texts.

-- Jecel