Supercon 2022 Badge (Voja4)

Name: Supercon 2022 Badge (Voja4)
SKU: 31844
Price: 70.00 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 5.00 (6 reviews)

(6 Reviews)

Badge from the 2022 Hackaday Supercon

Sold By 0xc0decafe

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Badge from the 2022 Hackaday Supercon

What is it? The badge from the 2022 Hackaday Supercon. All badges have a black soldermask with white and yellow silkscreen. Why did you make it? The badge was designed by Voja Antonic as a physical m…

What is it?

The badge from the 2022 Hackaday Supercon. All badges have a black soldermask with white and yellow silkscreen.

Why did you make it?

The badge was designed by Voja Antonic as a physical means of learning about and playing with a made-up 4-bit computer affectionately called the "Voja4".

What makes it special?

It's a joy to program! The badge is run by a PIC24 which emulates the "Voja4". Programs can be entered into the badge either by hand (similar to the Altair 8800) or over a serial port. The ISA is simple and easy to understand and the badge shows every detail of the inner-workings, including the processing of each nibble through the ALU and a user-selectable section of data memory.

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Review Breakdown

Average Ratings

Product: (5.00)

Documentation: (5.00)

Shipping: (5.00)

Communication: (5.00)

Carlos | June 10, 2024

A must have for any programer, electronic, or computer geek.

This 'badge' goes to my essentials list. I already own a PiDP11, a PiDP10 and a Digirule, all of them showcasing programing in machine language. What makes this one special over the rest is to be able to see how a internal CPU works by exposing the ALU, registers and RAM to the naked eye. Really well thought and full online documentation. Programs can be write in asm or in a higher level language, then compiled and transfered by UART. Has 15 flash saving slots for your programs. Is a impressive educational tool, a must have for every geek. Voja and the Hackaday team did a very impressive work with this one; one that will take much time to ever see a so much complete badge again. I deeply thank Nathan for reproducing the badge so people like me who weren't able to attend to the Supercon 2022 can have, play and learn with this beautiful piece of hardware, software and art. Thank you everyone!

Eric | June 3, 2024

Really cool product with excellent fast shipping

This is one of the most interesting/fun devices I've seen! My background is in CPU design so it's very familiar to me. I bought it because it exposes some of the inner workings of a real CPU with the LEDs and silkscreen. I love the LED for inversion when subtracting. And even clocking and carry-in enables are shown, well done!

As a kid, I always wanted an Altair, those toggle switches and LEDs were magic to me. This little board provides all of that fun! I love how well thought out it is including the LED matrix for registers, memory, etc. The multi-mode nature (load/store, run, single step, program) nature is true to the times. But back then it took a big box and $$$ to realize it!

This is a great toy for me but also a great educational product for all, thanks for offering it to those of us who couldn't attend!

P.S. I love the words of wisdom on the reverse side!

Wayne | May 10, 2024

Fun little board with a programming challenge

I am a curious electronics nerd and I have gotten bored with chasing the new prototype boards, configuring networking/I/Os, coding, etc. Basically I was getting burned out. This seemed interesting and challenging to learn to program and includes a ton of bright lights, basically perfect for me. At first I did not understand how to make the board do anything as I just threw in some batteries and started mashing buttons. Pretty quickly I realized that there is tons of documentation for how the board operates. There is a github repo with some fun games to load and play with. The github is also a great place to read the conversations between the creator and several knowledgeable programmers. I don't understand most of it, but I keep going back and finding something new every time. As a piece of hardware, this thing is a work of art. Perfect mix of new tech and some retro programming. I love it. Glad I made the purchase. Wasted tons of time and enjoyed every minute of it (minus the 1.5 hours I spent looking for a serial to usb c converter). Easy purchase, quickly delivered. 11/10 would recommend.

Adrian | March 8, 2024

Simply brilliant.

I don't know of another device like the Voja4. Brilliantly realised so one can see the logic state of most of the internals of the synthesised 4-bit microprocessor. A great conversation-starter sitting on the coffee table while at the same time, a powerful yet simple teaching tool backed up with extensive documentation and a beautifully written tutorial.
It doesn't get much better, though in my case it did.
In my excitement and haste to upgrade the firmware, I managed to get my board to the state of no LEDs on after a system reset. No!
I contacted the vendor with my tale of woe. Helpful was a understatement. He suggested a few fixes that bore no fruit. Consensus seemed to be that I had damaged the UART section of the PIC. Only option left at this stage was to try connecting a PICKit and try uploading the firmware in Hex format, bypassing UART.
Vendor sent me a spare PICKit he had and viola, it worked. (Read that last sentence again and give it some thought.)
Thanks a million for making this fantastic device available to us all and the help you provided to me when things didn't go to plan.

Sasa | Feb. 29, 2024

Fantastic educational tool

Want to know how a CPU works? Want to know how to program in binary? Want to do assembly programming? Want to know how information gets moved between registers and is handled as you step through your program? Great product and a real brain teaser. Fast shipping. A+

Corey | Feb. 15, 2024

What a blast!

Great customer service I had several questions when starting out using it, and every one was answered throughly and was given tips on where to go for more information.
Onto the device it’s self it’s a fun and educational computer and I highly recommend any one with a passion for computer science.

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