The Gigatron TTL 8-bit Computer
by Stephen Gillespiepublished on
The Gigatron was made by Marcel van Kervinck and Walter Belgers. Marcel sadly died on May 25 2020. I was lucky to meet him at the 2019 Belin Vintage computer Festival where I bought one of the Gigatron kits. I was struck by his enthusiasm for the project and his willingness to pass on his knowledge. A video of his talk at the VCF Berlin 2019 can be seen here.
It’s almost a year since Marcel passed away and I wanted to put together a post of my build to celebrate the amazing work he (and Walter) did. The documentation is amazing and so well written. It’s a real joy to follow and a great project to learn the basics of electronics with. So much though was put into the kit including how the TTL chips were packed and laid out in the same order in which they go onto the PCB.
I decided to use sockets for all the TTL chips and went for the tulip (turned pin) type as I think they look better and are much more robust than the cheaper dual leaf type. I also like the slight gap they have from the PCB for no real reason other than I think it looks good.
I am still very much a novice when it comes to electronics since I avoided working in the field as I knew I was colour blind since I was a kid. Now we have some cool gadgets which can identify resistors etc. without having to read the colour bands. My soldering my not be the best (due to the eyesight being less than optimal these days) but the Gigatron did work without a problem and luckily the soldering is hidden by the fancy wooden box. I think it’s a great idea to have the PCB framed in the box and it works especially well when you see how well it was laid out and each functional area marked.
The project is now open sourced and all the files needed to make your own are available. If you do not want to get your own PCBs made, there are also people offering PCBs and kits. (without the box though)
I would highly recommend checking out the project and getting you own kit. There is also a community of people adding to the knowledge base and expanding on the project.
