Show HN: BOOLR – A digital logic simulator | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: BOOLR – A digital logic simulator

boolr.me

136 pointsGGBRW21 comments

Last year we wanted to make a working computer in a simulator for a school project. We had learned something about digital logic, and we planned to build a computer in a digital logic simulator. We had tried many simulators, but we couldn't find what we were looking for. That's why we decided to make our own simulator, BOOLR, with electron and JavaScript. Because we were quite new to programming, it was quite buggy and slow, but it was much better looking and easier to use than other simulators.

Now, one year later, we have gained much more programming experience and we decided to start building a second version that is stable and fast enough for professional use. We are really exited for this project. We have huge plans and it will take a lot of time, but we hope we can make a lot of people happy with it and help people learn more about digital electronics.

If you have any suggestion for new features or changes, please do not hesitate to contact us on GitHub or send us an e-mail at info.boolr@gmail.com.

Nice work.

One question: were you able to simulate the full working computer (that you originally planned to make) in this simulator?

And some advice: you might want to gain some experience in hardware languages such as VHDL/Verilog/System-C. Then you'll quickly learn that the best tool for designing real digital logic isn't drawing diagrams. But for education purposes, those diagrams are still very helpful of course.

Looks like they did. Take a look under "Download Boards" part of the site.

This seems like one of the few software projects where using Electron is actually reasonable... Sorry! Couldn't resist ;) Joking aside, this looks really cool.

I have two questions:

   1. Does your code support a place where someone can implement a logic optimizer/compiler pass
   2. Can you compile to VHDL/Verilog

This looks great! Did you try Logisim when you were trying out other tools? How does this compare?

We've used Logisim for a long time teaching 61C at Berkeley (e.g. https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61c/su15/projs/05/ ) but development seems to have been discontinued.

Your work is amazing, very well done.

I also wanted to make a computer in a logic simulator. However, I found http://www.cburch.com/logisim/ was good enough for my needs. It allowed me to create a 16bit simple cpu and run it at about 4khz. You can even create custom components in javascript so that things like memory modules aren't just giant arrays of simulator-time wasting flip-flops.

Unfortunately, logisim has been abandoned by its creator

Wow, this is pretty cool, I can definitely see myself using this over Quartus for experimentation. It would be even better if it supported displaying logic gates in the ANSI style: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:ANSI_logic_gates

I've used QUCS for this purpopse, which allows inclusion of Verilog/VHDL modules via FreeHDL.

Nice. Good to know that this is a high school project. I was in university already when heavily used Xilinx to wire those logic gates, flip-flop, Mux etc. And burnt it down to FPGA, pretty fun.

Does your high school teach Digital Circuit & Logic Design, like, K-map, Quine–McCluskey?

To move components use Ctrl and Left-drag. Also works for the background.

That’s right! You can also scroll around by moving the mouse with the middle mouse button down.

How to rewire? "Remove connection" and then wire again?

Yes, unfortunately there is no easier option to rewire... We will definitely make a more efficient and more stable wiring system in BOOLR 2.0 with also, for example, options to draw many wires at once.

Its pretty old now but has anyone tried out Tk Gate?

This is very impressive

You should try Logism!

May I ask whats Logism?

A cheeky name for logisim: http://www.cburch.com/logisim/

Get out :p

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