Show HN: We built an 8-bit CPU as 2nd year EE students

A pair of second-year electrical engineering students rolled into Show HN with STEPLA-1, a tiny 8-bit computer built the hard way: piece by piece, with every part visible instead of hidden inside a mysterious chip. On paper, it’s a seriously ambitious student project, complete with its own instruction set, separate memory for code and data, and even a little startup trick that copies the program into working memory before the machine begins. Translation for non-hardware people: they didn’t just make a calculator-ish toy, they built a whole miniature computer and documented it like they were filing for custody.

But the real action was in the comments, where the crowd split into three camps: proud nerd dads, nitpickers, and bargain-hunter tinkerers. One person immediately swooped in with the classic “actually, this idea goes back way earlier,” name-dropping the old-school roots behind Ben Eater’s famous teaching computer. Another loved the boot process but instantly went full detective, asking what stops the startup system from barging back in and scribbling over memory later. And then came the mini flame war over the project’s claim that hardwired logic is more “transparent” than microcode: one commenter basically said, nice try, but a lookup table is still understandable if you know what’s in it.

The vibe? Mostly admiration, with a side of pedantry and hacker thrift-store chaos. One commenter cheered that this kind of project shuts down the doomposting about young engineers being lazy. Another somehow turned it into a coupon tip for used Bitcoin miner boards. In other words: the build impressed people, and the comments did what comments do best—turn applause into a debate club with memes and receipts.