Big Mess Of Wires

Fancy building your own computer? Some others who have the knack for it decided to turn that dream into reality, where Steve Chamberlin took around 18 months to complete his own homebrew CPU known as Big Mess of Wires (BMOW). All in all, it took him around $1,000 and 1,253 pieces of wire to construct this 8-bit computer. This labor of love most closely resembles the design found in the MOS Technology 6502 processor that saw action in Apple II, Commodore 64 and early Atari videogame consoles. Chamberlin ensured his CPU came with a trio of 8-bit data registers, a 24-bit address size and 12 addressing modes.