[HN Gopher] Show HN: The Montana MiniComputer
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Show HN: The Montana MiniComputer
Hey HN, we just released the 1.0 of the MonTana Mini Computer
(MTMC-16), a virtual teaching computer to help students understand
how low level computing works. It is a 16 bit computer with only 4k
of ram, but we've made some design choices that help maximize what
you can accomplish with the limited hardware
https://mtmc.cs.montana.edu/ It is written in java (sorry) and
provides a web interface that has: - a blinken-lighten display for
registers - a memory view with different filters you can apply -
a Gameboy-like game pad - a console you can use to interact with
the computer (including running assembly instructions directly) -
a file browser with an integrated editor for editing file So
everything you need to get going on low level programming. It
includes some sample code, including snake and conway's game of
life, in the /src directory. You can watch a quick start video
here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_6pZ_sT3y0 We have the
start of a C compiler for the machine, but that's still a work in
progress. We plan on improving the interactivity and visual
feedback over the next few months, so any feedback you can give us
would be very much appreciated!
Author : recursivedoubts
Score : 92 points
Date : 2025-07-25 14:25 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mtmc.cs.montana.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (mtmc.cs.montana.edu)
| jbanes wrote:
| Fun Fact: You can pass your starting patterns into the Life
| program. There are a bunch in /data. And you can make your own as
| long as they end in .cells
|
| My favorite is: life /data/galaxy.cells
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| A blinkenlights display? Sorry if this message is garbled; I need
| to wipe the drool off of my keyboard...
|
| You pointed us to a video, but not to a URL where we can either
| download it or interact with it online. Are there such?
| jbanes wrote:
| The title itself is the link. But here it is again:
|
| https://mtmc.cs.montana.edu/
|
| We made sure it was HTML3 compliant for shits and giggles
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Argh. I was thinking of an "Ask HN", where there is no link.
| My error. Thanks, though.
| colingauvin wrote:
| I am a Bozeman resident, got my PhD from MSU and my wife works
| there. Really was not expecting to see something from MSU make
| the front page of HN, well, ever, really. This is pretty cool.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| Go Cats!
| linuxlizard wrote:
| I did my MS-CS in Bozeman. I'm super excited to see MSU on HN
| FP as well! Very cool!
| crabl wrote:
| Bozeman tech scene is popping off recently!
| dboreham wrote:
| Waving from the Livingston side. There's quite a bit of cool
| stuff going on at MSU but you have to keep a look out for talks
| at MoR and on campus (typically in the winter/spring) to see
| it. Also the local IEEE chapter, although shamefully I think
| I've only made it to a couple of meetings in 25 years.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| This is cool! As someone who has TA'ed similar classes to this,
| I've noticed that students usually find classes that teach low
| level programming and assembly a drag. They often complain and
| find no interest in the material. Part of the feedback I've
| received on that is that 1) it's useless and 2) there is so much
| abstraction that it's hard to really understand what's going on
| if you already don't have a very strong mental model of how a
| computer works, which is not taught or expected in courses like
| these.
|
| I had the opportunity to play with an Altair 8800 clone and it
| seemed so much more intuitive there's not fifty layers of
| abstraction over how things like memory, I/O, etc. work, and you
| can inspect what's going on very easily. From looking at this
| project, it certainly feels similar, but much more easily
| accessible and programmable, while also really letting students
| get a feel for the organization of a computer without the
| abstraction. I really think this would help point (2). As for
| point (1), with easy graphics output, it's easy to do things like
| write games (like the aforementioned snake), and I think that
| would already make this a _lot_ more fun than the kind of
| assembly and C code that the course I TA 'ed wrote, such as "find
| the max of an array in memory using only assembly," or "implement
| a database to store information about courses in C."
|
| As a side note, it would be super cool to have things like CTFs
| that use the MTMC for pedagogical purposes, a la CMU's "Bomb
| lab"!
|
| I _really_ hope that universities adopt either this or something
| like this for introductory computer organization and low level
| programming courses. I genuinely believe that it would make a big
| difference in students developing a passion for low level
| programming, and I 'm really glad that this work was done.
|
| Side note: Java is honestly a great idea, since most students
| learn Java and thus the barrier of entry for contributing to this
| would be greatly reduced.
| musicale wrote:
| Cool. I wonder if some enterprising students (or others) might
| put together a physical hardware console that you could connect
| to a raspberry pi or fpga implementation?
| jbanes wrote:
| We're definitely hoping that happens at some point! One of my
| goals is to ensure the specs stay within the bounds of
| realistic hardware.
| rrenub wrote:
| This is really cool! How can this be used to learn/refresh topics
| about low level programming? What do you recommend coding in
| this?
| ethan_smith wrote:
| Try implementing a simple stack-based VM on it - it's a perfect
| stepping stone between assembly and higher-level languages
| while teaching you about memory management, instruction
| decoding, and execution flow all in one compact project.
| jbanes wrote:
| There's a built-in assembly editor with highlighting and
| intellisense autocomplete. Super easy to get started with
| coding assembly. AND you can run assembly directly from the
| command line. e.g. Type in "li t0 42" and 42 will be loaded
| into the t0 register.
|
| Just pull up the Machine Specification for the full list of
| instructions and try it out!
| sroerick wrote:
| Hello sir, can we take your class on this?
| ted_dunning wrote:
| This is really nice work. Of course I, and probably 70% of all HN
| readers as well, have a bunch of nits to pick (in Java, memory
| too small, instruction set quibbles and so on) but this is still
| a very nice piece of work.
|
| One of the best measures of your success is the number of ideas
| for extension that immediately pop into my mind. Memory mapped
| I/O of various kinds. DMA controllers with memory mapped
| registers. A forth interpreter. A tinyGo port. Bigger memory. An
| emulator for a Raspberry Pi or Pico. A scheme interpreter and
| compiler. A simple memory management unit.
| jbanes wrote:
| Ted! We met years ago when you visited Truven for a MapR sale.
| Really awesome to see you here. :)
|
| Many of the issues you're bringing up popped into my head when
| I started working with Carson on the project. But they've ended
| up being not a big deal. The machine is more than powerful
| enough to get through the lower level CS courses while being
| simple enough to be blindly obvious about how it all works.
|
| We're also cheating in a few areas like compiling graphics to a
| separate ROM space to keep the memory usage down.
|
| Carson and I have already chatted about eventually needing an
| MTMC-32 for Operating System Design classes. That would be the
| computer where Interrupts, TLBs, cache levels, pipelining,
| MMIO, block devices, etc, etc, etc would make sense. They'll be
| able tp build the Operating System themselves and figure out
| how to make it all work. And ideally share software with each
| other that they can compiler for their OS. (Like a TinyGo :))
|
| IMHO, this is an important step toward a suite of educational
| tools for the future.
| cushychicken wrote:
| Fuck yeah. Very cool.
|
| I got my EE degree from MSU and grew up in Bozeman. (I live in
| Boston now and I wonder _every fucking day_ why I don't live in
| Montana any more.)
|
| This has a whiff of something Brock Lameres or Ross Snider would
| be involved in. Except for the Java part. Nobody at MSU did Java
| except the CS department lol.
| bsmith wrote:
| "Woooo" Slaps chalk board. "Are you pumped for today's
| lesson?!" -Brock
|
| Best classes ever.
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(page generated 2025-07-25 23:01 UTC)