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Hobbyist builds fully functioning 16-bit CPU in Microsoft Excel


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Many of us with electronics and computer experience can probably appreciate the level of tedious detail it required to do this, incredible! At this point in my life it's a bit of a distant memory but watching this brings back some of those tech school memories; flipping switches on the emulator boxes, creating little assembly language programs, I still have those Intel 8088 books out in the garage somewhere. And wow, he created this within Excel using formulas!

 

Inkbox creates 16 bit CPU within Excel

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Excel is bananas.   I'm no expert--and as someone who mostly works with relational database servers, I find Excel pretty awful in a lot of ways--but it can do MUCH more than the typical spreadsheet tasks.

The most frustrating part of using Excel in my work is how difficult it can be to work with other Microsoft tech, like SSIS.  You'd almost think it was a competitor's product....

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I know about a couple of other spreadsheet programs but Excel is the only one I've ever really done anything with simply because it's been so ubiquitous in my life for so long. The MS Office suite were the only approved such programs going back as far as I can remember where I worked and the MS home use program meant you could buy the package dirt cheap for home computers.

 

When Quicken decided to go to the subscription model I jumped ship and spent many hours creating a spreadsheet for my personal finances. As things have changed I've modified and continue to tweak that same basic layout I'd created.

When my wife and I started our duo I used Digital Performer to create midi backing tracks for external keyboards/processors. I used Excel to organize and document those efforts.

I remember actually using Excel once at work to troubleshoot a digital circuit board. Putting in what I was seeing compared to what I should have been getting allowed me to narrow my troubleshooting down to a specific chip on the board and discovered some unsoldered leads on that part. Something that would have been much more difficult and time consuming using the normal oscilloscope probe to board method.

 

I wouldn't call myself an Excel expert but I've learned my way around it over the years and have found it to be very helpful for a number of things.

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Greg - this takes me back to the 90s at work.  I was assigned to find a way to simulate an an arbitrary flat array of LEDs to determine brightness and polar pattern.  I did it in Excel on 32 spreadsheets all linked together.  It ran on (I think) a Pentium 3, and each time I hit 'recalc' the PC would grind for 30 minutes.  Gave me time for long coffee breaks 😎

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