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Comment by shreyshnaccount | Hacker News Reader

>It’s absolutely insane how cheap and easy this stuff is, you know, to custom-design a new computer. I've always wondered how they do this. what software di they use to design it? is there a course that would teach me how to? is there a youtube playlist? i don't know what to even search for.

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https://www.kicad.org - It seems to be pretty popular for doing this kind of design. As for learning resources, maybe someone else can answer. I studied CMPE 20 years ago before switching to CS, I'm sure there are better resources out there now for learning (and, in particular, for self-study) than what I could possibly recommend (even if I could remember book titles).

KiCAD is excellent. You can use it to simulate circuits and play around consequence free as you learn. It has tools to go smoothly from schematic to simulation to PCB design including autorouting and checking netlists, which can be tedious and error prone to do by hand.

As far as general resources "the art of electronics" by horrowitz and hill is still a gold standard for all-around electronics knowledge, and is written with good pedagogy.

I don't know if it's the PCB layout thing that is the hurdle or just how a computer works in general. If the latter, it's worth mentioning Ben Eater (https://eater.net) in case this is the first time you've heard of his him.

> I've always wondered how they do this

Here’s two beginner friendly options:

- https://wokwi.com/

- https://www.flux.ai/

know any resources that teach you how to build a fairly complicated circuit?

What type of resource? A tutorial on how to build a specific complicated circuit? Or something teaching you on a progression up-to where you can design your own complicated circuits?

The latter, preferably.

Yeah, I’ve not seen anything that I love there unfortunately. Ton for the former, but not much for the later. I’ve thought of trying to create it, but I know how hard it is to produce great content and how unrewarding it is.

The datasheets for various simpler IC's often have extensive example applications with discussion of the principles. Texas Instruments' site is a goldmine.

There are a lot of categories of complicated circuit I think you can only master a couple in your lifetime. eg digital, analog, RF, metrology, high voltage and lots more and you can mix them to get more complicated.

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