I won the science fair first place! Take that all you Los Alamos people! (All those rich people with scientist parents at Intel, AMD, Sandia Labs, Los Alamos Labs, or any other government/coorporation offspring who competed against me.) There was one judge who worked at the Intel plant just north of here, and he was very impressed. The safety judges deemed it unsafe to power up on account of the "loose wires".
A few judges thought I was a nut job and a liar. They didn't believe a sophomore in high school could design and build a computer. All kinds of computer science majors and engineers came and saw it. A lot of them were very impressed. A few were very skeptical. The judges wanted to see either the simulations I ran or the computer working. Both were unavailable to me, because I didn't prepare that. I don't understand how all the people around me can just say their results were accurate, but the stupid judges doubt me and insist I prove it! I got a special award from the Mu Alpha Theta organization. It's a national math association. What the hell did my project win that for? There was a whole category dedicated to math projects with people in it! I was really surprised they pulled a national award on me like that.
Concerning the creation of a simulation, everybody I talked with recommends I show one. My CPU I built woudn't even have to work if I had a solid simulation on my laptop demonstrating the designs usefulness. So I really want to create a simulation, and also find a way to keep the circuit from getting to freakin hot when its on. (The first time I powered it on, it quickly reached 30 degrees C above ambient, and I was forced to turn it off. (short possibly??) I should have put a cooling fan in the design as well. I have 1 month to change the project, without changing the topic. We'll see how all that goes!
Any advice on making my display more flashy? I had a light-up 113 LED display on the top. It sucked because I didn't have a battery holder, one LED was burned out, the thing wanted to fall off right away (I improvised and used one of the advertisement magazines and some duct/duck tape to hold it up!), my batteries died after the first half of the day, and all-in-all, they were really dim red LED lights in a well lit room. The board was TONS of text, my schematics professionally printed, 4 pictures of the inside, 1 flow chart, two graphs, and these light blue borders around everything. The girl next to me had this really cool electrical engineering board with lightning bolts, tons of pictures, and a binder full of extra info. The display really ashamed my attempt at one.
Also, any advice on making loose wires enclosed? I couldn't power it on because of that. These black wires ran from a seperate board over to the CPU in a really big ribbon cable. But, the safety inspector said that those wires were conductors that could potentially harm somebody. The rules say I must either ground them, or enclose them. I can't ground them, because they are signal wires, not power, so the only other option is enclosure.
The last thing that needs to be changed before state is I need to put up all of my conversations on this forum thread, because of credit purposes. So anybody that comments on this forum, I have to ask you guys if I can quote what you say, use what you've told me, and credit each one of you correctly. Anybody that disagrees with me using things they said will not be credited. If you guys have issues with this "credit" stuff, please talk with me before you get all angry.
On a completely unrelated side-note, there was this cute blond girl that stood next to me all day. When we broke for lunch, I ate with her and her friend. (She was in engineering, her friend in botany). It's all too bad that she lives 300 miles away! (and that I creamed her and she can't go to state with me.
)