This is my first serious attempt to learn electronics. DAN64 is my first project and it has been a discovery process during 3 months of my free time. I had to learn a lot of things I didn't know much about, from basic electronics to the details of the AVRs -and specifically the ATmega328-, and a whole world of things in between such as signalling, protocols, interfaces, modulation and demodulation, SDKs, EDA software, prototyping, PCB fabrication, etc.

I'm certain that in this project I'm doing many stupid things and I'm sure my approach to solving some of the problems is not the best, but in my discharge I can only say: it works! (to some extent at least).

I got lots of gotcha! moments, ups and downs where I though I couldn't finish the project because perhaps what I was trying to achieve was just impossible.

So this is not about perfection but about good enough for me and about the learning process and having fun.

OBJECTIVES

The term "8-bit microcomputer" might not be clear enough. What I meant with it is that I wanted to build a computer like the ones I grew up in the 80s, the ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64 or the Amstrad CPC.

It will be a single board computer capable of input using a keyboard, output to a screen, and able to load external programs and run them. It should be possible to use the computer to write new programs that could be saved to be loaded and run at a later time.

So basically: an 8-bit microcomputer.