Home - MAX4 Relay Computer

Welcome! I doubt I’ll have many (if any) people reading this blog - it’ll be more for my own record keeping as well as remembering what I have done and why more than anything else.

I can’t remember when I came across relay computers - probably around the time I was making the N8VEM SBC, I really liked the idea of going back to computing history before transistors as a learning opportunity, but at that time (and let’s face it, now as well) the cost and time required to build them was fairly prohibitive. I’ve been doing some more reading and research into them over the last few months and have come to the conclusion that it may indeed be possible to build some sort of hybrid version of an early relay machine. Head over to the Architecture category to learn more about the design I’ve been working on.

To sum it up succinctly - I’m planning on making a the core of a 4 bit relay computer (ALU, registers etc) with an interface to digital memory (relays are expensive!) and using a microcontroller to drive a lot of the control logic to reduce the machines footprint and reduce the component count. With the ALU, Registers and all interfacing relays the machine will still have the satisfying “click” to it, but won’t cost an arm and a leg to build, nor will it take years and years to construct which seems to lead to a lot of premature deaths of other relay computer projects I’ve seen online.