My first encounter with the 555 Timer IC, Electrolytic capacitors, and my experience verifying all of those components.

Getting all of the components for this project was a challenge, an experience, and now a breath of relief for me. After days of back and forth between different markets and shops to get the right components, Finally I had all that I needed and I could now begin building the 8-bit Computer.

Initial Confusion

Seeing all of the components on my table was a scary sight at first. Tens of small plastic bags with multiple smaller components each wrapped together intimidated me at first because I didn’t even know what any of them were called. Fortunately, the seller had mentioned their names on the plastic bags but there was still a problem – The Naming scheme used by the seller was Greek to me.

So now, I had everything but I knew nothing. I didn’t know if I had all the right components as mentioned in Ben Eater’s list and I was concerned if all of them would work since I saw Reddit posts mentioning not to mix different version components with each other. Now I had to verify if I had the right parts at the same time now knowing what most of them are called or do. With that in mind, I went to my friend for help – Google.

A night not well spent

Late at night, I started with Ben Eater’s list which had the names and links for the parts required for this project. I spent hours verifying each component with Ben’s list and checking Google to see if they looked the same as mine. Most of the ICs looked the same with a few differences in their names. In the project, Ben uses the LS variant of most ICs which are hard to find because they’re old. While I mostly had the HC variant of the chips that are newer and easier to find. A helpful post at r/beneater really helped guide me through the differences. After a few hours I verified all of the components and most of the stuff matched Ben’s list the few that didn’t were a few capacitors and resistors that come in different shapes and sizes so not much to worry about there.

Post Verification Organization

It took me a few hours to name and verify each component in the list but finally, I had made sure that I had all the right parts for this project. I had named each of them on the list. After that, there was just one thing left to do – Organizing them all. For that, I bought two compartment boxes, one with smaller 24 compartments and the other with 8 medium-sized compartments to put the parts in. I began by naming each compartment first and then putting in the respective part. It was another hour or so of effort but it was now a real sigh of relief that I had them all in one place accessible to me.. Now only one thing remained – With the first module of the 8-bit Computer – The Clock Module.

A Word of advice

If you’re going to gather most of the parts for the 8-bit Computer project like me on your own, I would really recommend you spend some time verifying your parts and getting the compartment boxes to put all of those tiny parts in one place. Verifying each component gives you a sense of its function and organizing them gives a peace of mind knowing you don’t have to go back to the shop to replace something that they forgot, Speaking from my own experience, I can’t remember how many times I had to go back to replace the resistors, switches, capacitors, and those male-male header pins