The Electronics Australia EDUC-8 microcomputer

The EDUC-8 was one of the first build-it-yourself microcomputers, designed by Jim Rowe and published in Electronics Australia 1974-1975. It is an 8-bit machine with 256 bytes of memory, all constructed using 7400 series TTL.

The prototype machine pictured above (left) is at the ACMS. The other machine (right) is at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Thank-you to both of these organisations for the pictures.

I have written an EDUC-8 architecture description.

Claude Code and I have written a browser-based emulator - try it out!

Schematics (PDF) by Gwyllym Suter (updated 2/6/2024)

Note: See GitHub repository for full complement of files

CPU

• E8-T Timing - Ignore note "swap pin 8,9"
• E8-P Program Counter and Adder logic
• E8-P Program Counter and Adder logic, modified to use 74LS74
• E8-D Decoder - Must swap U13A (3) and U13B (6) outputs to U8 (14,15)
• E8-A Accumulator
• E8-M 256 word memory
• E8-IOT Input-Output Interface
• EDUC-8 PSU
• Front panel
• Motherboard
• Rear panel wiring looms
• 128x16 RAM

Peripherals

• ASCII keyboard
• E8Serial
• Keyboard interface
• Octal display

Links

• Electronics Australia magazine has become Silicon Chip and will sell reprints of the original articles
• Jim Rowe is on the staff of Silicon Chip
• https://www.educationaldigitalmicrocomputer.blogspot.com Garry Page's EDUC-8 Construction blog (gone)
• Steven Pietrobon's EDUC-8 Construction blog

Downloads

• EDUC-8 architecture as a Docbook file (XML file, 37k, probably best to do a Save Link here)
• EDUC-8 emulator V1.0.1 for Windows, including source (GPL) (ZIP file, 56k)