Veteran Microsoft engineer makes his own RAM from scratch using AI
- ID
- 41508
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 31 Oct 2026, 7:40 PM
- Fetched
- 31 Oct 2026, 9:56 PM
- Provider
- Tom's Hardware
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/veteran-microsoft-engineer-makes-his-own-ram-from-scratch-using-ai-attempts-to-build-4mb-of-1970s-pdp-11-ram-from-scratch
- Source URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/feeds/all
Summary
- Score
- 3.0
- Created
- 31 Oct 2026, 9:57 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coders
What happened
A Tom's Hardware headline reports that an engineer described as a veteran Microsoft engineer built a custom FPGA board to recreate 1970s PDP-11 RAM from scratch, targeting 4MB, in order to avoid extreme prices for original period memory, with AI used somewhere in the process. The supplied text is almost entirely site navigation and subscription boilerplate, so there are no specifics on cost, FPGA part, AI tool used, or whether the 4MB target was reached.
Why it matters
There is not enough detail here to change a builder's decision: no cost figures, no AI workflow, no schematics, no measured result. Treat it as a curiosity about retro-hardware economics rather than a practical signal for AI tooling or development work.
Discussion angle
Where AI genuinely helps in hardware and retro-computing work versus where the headline is doing the heavy lifting — and whether legacy-hardware substitution projects like this are useful case studies for the group.