I’ll play devil’s advocate.

Following Ben’s videos and building the 8-bit CPU is the first thing that ever helped me “get” electronics and circuitry.

Honestly, way more than half of the fun has been in finding the design flaws and designing fixes for them as well as improving and expanding the design itself.

I have learned so much by going down rabbit holes. The original clock design assumes a make-before-break switch but the one shipped with the kit is the opposite, and this can put one of the flip flops into an invalid state. I switched to CMOS chips and learned why you shouldn’t drive loads like LEDs directly from digital outputs, and dove into the easiest way to power 8 LEDs off 8 IC outs without a mess of transistors. I followed another person’s expansion to a full 8-bit instruction register and a more featureful ALU (with my own changes of course). I worked to minimize power consumption. I’ve learned how to use an oscilloscope. I’ve improved upon nearly every module, and built and rebuilt them all a handful of times.

None of this has any real benefit for the CPU. It will never run anything more than toy programs. But that wasn’t ever the point.

All the flaws in the original design have been perfect as launching points for learning more and more.