At first glance, this mess of wires, onboard components, and manually soldered circuits may seem like some sort of cyberpunk sculpture, but it's actually a project that can only be described as absurdly brilliant. A passionate enthusiast has just built an entire processor—yes, not a development board, not a microcontroller, but a full-on, instruction-capable, memory-addressing CPU using nothing but old memory chips and logic components from the 8-bit era. It wasn’t designed to replace a modern CPU, but rather a "fun" DIY project, dubbed the EPROMINT.
The creator behind this astonishing project, Majsterkowanie i nie tylko (or MINT for short, "DIY and more" in English), spent three months designing, wiring, programming, and documenting every last detail of the processor’s architecture. The idea was born from a simple experiment using obsolete memory chips called EPROMs, originally configured to control small external systems, like a PWM dimmer or a message display. The simplicity of that setup lit a spark. If memory could be used to simulate basic logic, then perhaps the building blocks of a complete processor weren’t so far off.
